


in cold blood

by awkwardwritersyndrome



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Blood, Buckle up kids, F/F, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Minor Korra/Mako, Minor Korra/Pema, Minor Tarrlok/Tenzin, Porn With Plot, Public Sex, Surgery, this is going to be a real fucking ride
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:02:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28662903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardwritersyndrome/pseuds/awkwardwritersyndrome
Summary: Kuvira Beifong has carved out a name for herself in the world of medicine. Korra is a bullheaded resident with her sights set on making a name of her own. Interesting circumstances bring their paths together, and they begrudgingly find a way to learn from one another.
Relationships: Asami/Baatar Jr. (Avatar), Bolin & Korra & Mako & Asami Sato, Korra & Asami Sato, Korra/Kuvira (Avatar), Lin Beifong & Kuvira, Tarrlok/Tenzin (Avatar)
Comments: 50
Kudos: 91





	1. deliverance

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was heavily inspired by my old surgery preceptors but it's not based on real people. None of the medicine discussed herein is guaranteed to be accurate so take everything with a grain of salt. 
> 
> PLEASE read the tags before you pass go.

_How did I get here?_

_That is a complicated question with a complicated answer. I could start with my birth but it makes more sense to start with a rebirth of sorts._

_When I was 18 years old I stole my brother’s motorcycle. He’s not my real brother, not in any sense of the word. We don’t share genetics, we don’t share a familial love, we don’t share anything, except a dull indifference for our family. Baatar was my only adoptive sibling that didn’t see me as_ other, _and I returned his affections the best I could. Suyin kicked me out of the house for it, sending me to live with her sister when I was 13. That only made Baatar and I closer, more reckless, spiteful. We became tethered by our desire to see Suyin hurt the way we had._

_He felt like home when I didn’t have one, comfort when I only knew solitude, an escape when I was trapped. We got better at affection. It sufficed for so long._

_We eloped the day after my high school graduation, and Lin was the only one privy to our plans. She tried to talk me out of it, but I thought I knew best, I thought I was in love. I was wrong._

_I woke up in a shitty motel near Union Station, the Beifong family ring on my left hand, just two days after_ starting _my “adult” life, and I felt the weight of the world crash down around me. I packed my honeymoon clothes, took Baatar’s bike, and sped down I94 as fast as I could. I can’t remember when I lost sight of the road. Maybe I was blind the whole time...blind my whole life._

_They told me I should’ve died, and technically I did. The bike was barely recognizable, just a trail of glass and metal strewn across four lanes of high speed traffic. An exposed rebar on the side of the road pierced straight through my shoulder and ripped open every vessel it could find. Nestling right between my first and second rib, it punctured my right lung, my subclavian vein, and the neighboring artery, and shattered the medial edge of my scapula. I lost approximately 42 percent of my blood on the pavement one random Monday in June. I was dumb and lucky._

_Lin hates the rest of this story. They dragged her out of the hospital after refusing to let her scrub in on my emergency surgery. Tenzin says he’s never seen her so distraught and frantic. I’ve_ still _never seen it because I was unconscious when they wheeled me into the emergency room._

_My heart stopped for 192 seconds. A small blood clot formed in my left ventricle and shot up to my cerebral artery after some poor ER nurse cracked a rib trying to restart cardiac contractions. Parts of my brain lost vital blood supply. They call this an ischemic stroke, but the terminology is unimportant when you have to spend the next year learning to walk again._

_It seemed like life outside of the hospital went on without me. Suyin and the kids visited for the first week and never came back. I suppose Chicago is a bit too far from LA. Baatar started college at Stanford, and wrote me letters saying he couldn’t wait for me to get better and join him. Turns out, he really couldn’t wait._

_He figured out that I wasn’t writing back because I wasn’t coming — not after my 15th surgery, not after rehab, not ever. I suspect Lin told him that I was the world’s dumbest runaway bride, and he promptly forced himself to move on. I signed a stack of divorce papers with my non-dominant right hand 38 days after my wedding because my left was in a cast._

_Lin and my team of doctors were the only people with me, day in and day out, making sure I didn’t wither away, though I tried my best to do just that. I wanted to be done with the chronic pain, and daily failures, and the suffocating reality that I was never going to be done healing. I’d always be broken._

_I’m still a bit broken, a porcelain cup glued back together. But I’m stronger too. My cracks have been reinforced by discipline, determination, and brute will. The woman who raised me didn’t deserve to bury me, so I built myself back up with a dream so daunting it scared death off my doorstep. Laying in a hospital bed for 331 days, running from the reaper, taunting him with my frail, debilitated body, opened my eyes to a world I wanted to be part of._

_I was 19, a year behind my peers, and barely able to walk, but I had made my mind up. Four years of undergrad at University of Chicago, four more years at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, five years of surgical residency at U Mich, and a two year fellowship in vascular surgery at Rush University Medical Center. It took 12,640 days of precision, focus, and meticulous commitment to my work, to earn me a handful of letters behind my name, and access to unbridled power. Make no mistake, outsmarting death is an addiction, and I’ve tapped an endless supply._

_In my five years as an attending at Rush, I’ve never lost a patient. Some call it luck, others call it magic, and I call it what it is —_ skill _._

 _I wasn’t born with the knowledge to save lives, no one is, we learn through brutal, humbling practice. To think I was_ blessed _with this skill is an insult to my labor, my sacrifice, my suffering. I took what I wanted from life, and now, I pay it back by pulling people from the cold, hard grip of death._

 _I’m no magician. I’m a surgeon._ That’s _how I got here._

* * *

**6:12AM // Rush University Medical Center // Hematology Floor**

“Have you seen Dr. Beifong?” Tenzin asks flatly. He takes absurdly wide steps while looking over charts on his tablet, a first year resident in tow. His voice is calm but the question — specifically the subject of the question — causes a spike in the resident’s heart rate. She stares up at the side of his clean shaven head and calculates the best way to say that she’s not seen Kuvira all morning.

Everyday before rounds, Tenzin and Kuvira meet briefly to discuss their clinical trial, which has been two years in the making. Tenzin wrote the grant, Kuvira developed the angioplasty technique, and they worked together on an anticoagulation compound to improve recovery. Their study, if successful, was going to be a modern medical breakthrough. Tenzin just needs to corral his counterpart long enough to get her input on their operations. To Kuvira’s credit, she was there for every important decision, every major roadblock, and every significant finding. Still, it bothered the more veteran physician that their meetings took a backseat to her surgery caseload. 

This morning, like most, he was hoping to catch her before she became fully submerged in her work. Tenzin is always a bit too optimistic when it comes to these things, and Kuvira is a bit too keen on his jockeying for her attention. Their collaboration has evolved into a game of cat and mouse, but somehow Kuvira is the slick feline, prowling about just out of Tenzin’s reach, and he is a frantic rodent searching for her in every wing of the hospital.

Jinora almost starts her sentence with “dad” — a force of habit — but coughs before she commits the cardinal sin, stretching her steps to keep up with her father’s gate. They have a strict “no dad” rule to avoid any accusations of nepotism, though the side eyes come in droves without so much as a word between them. The shared last name condemns them anyway. 

“Uhhh, Dr. Beifong hasn’t exactly...uhhh” Jinora swivels her head around as she stammers, looking for bravery and a way out of this conversation. No luck. “She hasn’t exactly showed up yet.”

Tenzin stopped in his tracks. “What?!”

* * *

**6:32AM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgical Wing**

Every operating room looks the same at Rush. The floor is a beige epoxy. The walls have ugly matching tiles. The window to the hallway stretches from one corner to another until it meets the frame of the heavy swinging door. The incandescent lights are a harsh bright white that mimics the glow of the afterlife. Only one thing distinguishes OR 200 from all the others, and she’s standing in the middle of the room, eyes closed, hands dancing in the air like a balletic routine. 

Attendings usually stroll into the hospital around 8:00AM for rounds, coffee in hand, and an overpriced messenger bag swung over their shoulder. But Kuvira arrives before the residents, and the medical students, and the sun. She runs three miles down Ashland from her corner apartment in Bucktown, makes use of the private showers in the attendings locker room, and reviews her charts all before her students trail off the 9 Bus at Harrison. She’s never found utility in letting her team beat her to work. 

Today, she opts out of checking with the charge nurse and decides to leave some room for her team to work independently. Kuvira knows if she lingers on the post-op floor too long Tenzin will send a resident — most likely Jinora — to drag her down to hematology. Her Thursday surgery will be daunting, and she much rather prepare for that than waste twenty minutes placating Tenzin’s worries about their study. 

Her preparation always includes a rehearsal. No simulator, no assistants, no noise. Kuvira takes center stage in her OR, standing as a giant and a servant all at once, seeing in her mind a meshwork of veins and arterioles that most people cannot understand when it’s right in front of them. Her eyes are lightly shut, rolling behind their lids as they traverse the vision of her patient, imagining what the day of surgery will bring. 

The sleeves of her long white coat are neatly rolled above her elbow, hair pinned into a low bun, black shoes quietly squeaking as she shifts her weight. Every few minutes she hums in contemplation, faced with a hypothetical setback that she solves with a stroke of her imaginary scalpel, or the thread of an invisible suture. 

From the wide basin sinks on the other side of the window she looks to be meditating, or losing her mind. There’s a thin line between the two. Tenzin peaks into the room and huffs a sigh of frustration and relief.

He pushes through the swinging door with a rehearsed speech of disapproval ready to go, but Kuvira knows who’s interrupted her from the way he clears his throat, she cuts him off before he begins. “I’m busy.”

“Huh?” All of his resolve crumbles, and Tenzin has to scratch his beard for a moment before he finds a suitable reply. “Well...so am I, Kuvira, but we have a standing meeting at—”

“7:30...no?”

“Yes, exactly. And—”

“And you’ve found some reason to send your daughter to my office, _and_ my post-op floor, _and_ my locker — which she should not have access to — every day at increasingly earlier times. What time is it right now, Tenzin?”

The saliva in his mouth has dried up and his salivary glands have stopped functioning _._ He clears his throat once more, flustered and caught off guard by Kuvira’s bluntness. Young doctors typically display much more deference in his presence. “It’s half past 6.”

“Half past 6. If that’s so, why are you in my OR?”

“I just thought we could be a bit more thorough with staffing the patient files. You can never be too careful.”

Kuvira reluctantly opens her eyes and gives up trying to work while Tenzin’s badgering her. She releases a slow breath to temper her annoyance. 

“Wrong,” she says as she walks around Tenzin and out the door, making her way to the attendings lounge. It takes a second for him to realize she’s left, and he spins around to pursue her. 

“Wrong what?” he shouts confusedly at her back. 

“You _can_ be too careful,” she replies, her voice no louder than the din of noise filling the surgical wing. 

“That— I don’t see how that’s possible,” Tenzin refutes. He’s been practicing medicine for twenty five years and finds comfort in his quippy idioms, so the slight feels personal.

Looking forward and focused on her destination, Kuvira explains; “Being too careful means second guessing, delaying action, wavering. It’s much better to plan ahead, plan judiciously, and promptly execute. I prefer to be intelligent, Dr. Tenzin...not careful.”

Tenzin slips into the attendings lounge behind Kuvira as she neglects to hold the door, he’s nimble for an old man with a large frame. There’s a warmth building beneath his scrub top and it’s unclear if it’s from walking fast or feeling perturbed. Kuvira doesn’t pay him any mind as she pours herself a cup of coffee and sits at a free computer to review charts.

“Are you suggesting that I’m not—”

“Hhhhhh,” the exasperated sigh falls from her lips and she swivels her chair to face Tenzin, finally giving him her full attention. “I’m not suggesting, I am saying, outright and plain, I find you to be hesitant _...soft._ That’s not how I work, so if we’re going to finish this clinical trial, I’d prefer that you keep your daughter out of my office and make do with our standing 7AM meeting.”

The few doctors that are innocently picking through the bagels figure it’s a good time to check out the new front desk. They shuffle out of the lounge, leaving Tenzin there with his red face, knocked down a few pegs by his much younger colleague. Kuvira sips her coffee as he aggressively fixes the lapels of his white coat. 

“Jinora is a bright young hematologist, I don’t see why you keep bringing her up. She’s just following orders from the Chief of Hematology.” He’s hoping that mention of his title will quell Kuvira’s venom. It does not.

“Dr. Tenzin, I’m well aware that you’re the chief down there. No need to grandstand.” She takes another polite sip from the disposable coffee cup before continuing. “My gripe is with your poorly conceived notion of how I work. Everyone else may turn a blind eye to your favoritism, but I’m not so easily mollified.”

“Favoritism?” The heat that started in Tenzin’s chest has engulfed his entire head. 

“Jinora seems adequately intelligent, but what experience does she have that qualifies her to recruit patients for our study? Then there’s your mentee, Dr. Korra. Another up-and-coming doctor that’s receiving too much acclaim too soon, largely due to your efforts. Stop me when I’ve said something wrong.” She enjoys another sip, face straight, resolute in her claims. 

Every fiber of Tenzin’s stoic demeanor is ruffled and turned inside out. His insecurities are plastered all over his face. Kuvira is a knife in his side, soberly twisting, educing the worst type of pain — embarrassment. “I take offense to what you’re insinuating. Korra and Jinora only benefit from my success as much as you benefit from Lin’s.”

Bad choice. Those few words, about that specific part of Kuvira’s life, flip a switch deep inside her amygdala. She has been docile up to this point, but Tenzin’s assertion gives her permission to sublimate her festering emotional turmoil into crisp, pointed honesty. She goes for the jugular. “You would stand here with a straight face and equate my circumstances to those of your daughter and your pupil? How exactly does being orphaned, abandoned, and taken in by a successful woman with some semblance of a heart, parallel the privilege your reputation provides? Lin has never given me a spot on a research team. She’s never spoken to the dean of students about my admission. She provided nothing but structure and support, while you’ve constructed a golden staircase for two perfectly average physicians. You being offended by the truth is not my problem, and I’m not interested in hearing your contrived points of view moving forward. Now, are there any other asinine statements you wish to share with me _before_ our morning meeting?”

“Well…” Tenzin’s mouth opens and closes. Suddenly his knees feel weak, the lights are too bright, his words are sticking to the walls of his trachea. There is no undoing what he’s said, but he wishes he could. “...I didn’t mean that, per se. I just...I meant...if we could meet a bit earlier.” His words trail off as their futility becomes apparent. “That’s all I’m asking Dr. Beifong, I would like to meet earlier.”

“Then this could have been an email.” Kuvira stands and finishes her coffee, tossing it in the garbage as she breezes out of the lounge. Tenzin is too nervous to look eye contact so he misses the tinge of pain that flashes in them. Kuvira is strong, but she has an easily accessible achilles heel, and he’s inadvertently stabbed it. 

Tenzin stands alone in the lounge until a few doctors trickle in. The work day continues around him. Death does not wait for the burn of demoralizing discussions to fade away. He clears his throat and smiles pensively before leaving. 

Kuvira finds herself slumping into her office chair, door locked, blinds drawn, comfortable in her solitude once again. She decides to skip their meeting for the morning.

* * *

**7:12AM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgery Floor**

“I need to get in on that trial with Tenzin and Beifong,” Korra says, anxiously clicking her pen light on and off. Asami is half listening as she writes and erases names on her whiteboard in an attempt to lock down the resident on-call schedule for the next sixteen weeks. When she applied to be the chief surgical resident she was interested in the small pay bump and the letters of recommendation that are guaranteed for fellowship applications. She didn’t, however, anticipate all the minutia to be so tedious.

“Do you want me to talk to Baatar about it?” Asami asks as she writes Korra’s initials in red for a few overnight shifts. 

“Hey! What the fuck? Being the chief resident’s best friend is supposed to have some perks.” 

“Right. As if I could leave you off this schedule without losing my job.” She bites off the cap of a green marker and draws stars next to all the high profile surgeries for the month, most of which will be led by Kuvira. “Do you want me to talk to Baatar or not?”

“No,” Korra gruffs. “The last thing I need is for Baatar to try schmoozing his ex-sister wife, who kind of hates him.”

Asami holds back a guilty laugh and shoots Korra a look of watered down disapproval. Admittedly, she’s never quite understood Baatar’s relationship with Kuvira, and hearing about their elopement and divorce was their most awkward date in medical school, by far. Still, she respects their history, as complicated as it is. Most people perceive their distance as dislike, but Asami has always assumed it has more to do with emotional self-preservation. 

“Kuvira doesn’t hate him. And if you ever say sister wife again I’ll push 80mg of roc while you’re sleep in the on-call rooms. Night night forever.”

Korra shudders a bit, unsure if Asami is joking. The Beifong family can be a sore subject in the hospital. “I kid, I kid,” Korra says lightheartedly. “In all honesty, I think the only way to get Beifong on my side is with a slam dunk surgery. Maybe you could help with that.”

Asami folds her arms and looks back to the whiteboard. She scribbles a few arrows and crosses out a few things. “There, how’s that?”

Korra comes and stands by her side to check. A beaming smile appears on her face and she reaches over to bop one of Asami’s titties without peeling her eyes off the board. “Love ya, Tits.”

“Please don’t call me that at work,” Asami sighs. 

“Awwww come on,” Korra teases. They’ve been calling each other Tits and Tots since undergrad when a particularly crass, borderline sexist TA gave them the nickname after catching them making out before 1PM chem lab. Something about titrating bases and acids really did it for them back then.

“Get out my face, _Tots,_ before I regret this.”

That was good enough for Korra. She kissed Asami’s cheek and hurried out of her office to find Tenzin.

* * *

**12:02PM // Rush University Medical Center // Hematology Floor**

Jinora is furiously typing in the residents office, adding too much detail to her notes despite being told to tailor her assessments. Korra punches in the code and startles her younger friend. “Oh goodness! Hi, Korra. You scared me.”

“Sorry Ji Ji, where’s your dad?”

“He doesn’t like when people call him my—” 

Korra’s dismissive gaze cuts her short. “He’s in sickle cell clinic, then the M&M meeting after that.”

“Shit. Okay, thanks.” Korra dashes out of the office before Jinora can ask for some feedback on her notes. That’s a bit of mentorship that will have to wait. 

Korra loves Jinora, and Tenzin’s whole family, but the eldest of his children is a bit of a perfectionist, to say the least, and that’s not exactly Korra’s style. Ever since she decided on attending U Chicago for their direct admit pre-med program, she’s been figuring things out as she goes. It’s a marvel that she’s a successful doctor given her flare for the dramatic, easy-going approach, and unorthodox techniques. She’s a veteran surgeon’s nightmare. 

* * *

**12:10PM // Rush University Medical Center // East Building Hematology Clinic**

When she makes it to the sickle cell clinic, there are nurses and residents busy checking patients in, taking their vitals, and herding them into exam rooms. There’s a giggly young boy in the reception area, no older than seven, and he looks up at Korra with a nervous gaze as she heads to the back. 

Before disappearing behind the receptionist’s desk, she pulls a sucker from one of her coat pockets and hands it to him. “Don’t worry, Buddy, Dr. Tenzin is the best.” She may not do things by the book, but Korra has the nurturing touch of a healer. She’s truly invested in the wellbeing of others, and that’s something that can’t be said for every doctor. 

Tenzin’s voice bellows through the back halls and Korra follows the sound to the office. She finds him thumbing through old documents between exams. He likely has a few minutes before his next patient. “Tenzin, guess what!”

 _“Good afternoon, Dr. Tenzin. How are you? That’s good. Oh me? I’m great, I have some news,”_ he mocks. Korra’s never been the best with manners. 

“Right, right. Hi, hello, how are you? Now guess what!”

He looks up from his stack of paperwork with the intention of flashing a frown, but Korra’s enthusiasm morphs it into a subtle grin. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until after clinic?”

“I landed a popliteal artery aneurysm repair,” Korra exclaims, she’s practically bouncing on her toes with joy. 

“You mean your friend Dr. Sato assigned you to the case?” Tenzin raises a critical brow and gets his answer from Korra’s bashful smirk before she can deny it. “Hmmmm.” As he returns to his papers he hears Kuvira’s voice in his head — _favoritism._

Korra sits in the chair next to Tenzin and begins to fiddle with the portable dopplers on the desk. “Korra, please, those are expensive.”

“Sorry. You...you uh, don’t seem happy for me,” she admits hesitantly. She was hoping that this big case would be the fuel she needed to get on her mentor’s groundbreaking research team. Instead, he seems mildly disappointed. 

“I’m happy for you. I just don’t want you getting comfortable relying on your connections to get things done.” He keeps his eyes on the paperwork to hide his real concern.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chief,” Korra mutters sarcastically, dropping her chin onto her fist. “So much for working with you and Beifong.”

Tenzin’s eyes go wide. _Beifong? Please be talking about Lin,_ he wishes quietly. “You wanted to join the stenting trial?”

“Of course I do. Everyone wants to be on that trial, Tenzin. You all are looking at ASA Medallions, Nobel Prizes, Purple Hearts and shit,” she explains excitedly, a hint of desperation in her voice. 

“Purple Hearts are for military veterans.”

“Whatever, you get my point. Jinora is the best heme resident and she’s on the trial. I’m the best surgical resident, so I should be on it too. I would be already if Beifong wasn’t a raging bi—”

“Korra! People can hear you,” he says, cutting her off before listening ears catch her insubordination from the hall. A few nurses shuffle by then he continues, “if the pop repair goes well, _maybe_ I can look into getting you on the study.”

In a flash, Korra is strangling Tenzin’s neck with a hug, and wrinkling the collar of his white coat. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she chirps between pecking kisses on his bald head. 

“You’re very welcome, but no guarantees.” He stands up, smooths out his clothes, and straightens his face. “Now, can I get back to clinic?”

“Definitely, don’t let me interrupt,” Korra jests. She jumps to her feet and heads back to surgery.

* * *

**10:11PM // Little Italy // Hawkeye’s Bar**

The bartender plops two more plastic pitchers of cheap beer in front Korra, Asami, Mako (their favorite scrub nurse), and Bolin (his little brother that’s working on his third degree for absolutely no good reason). 

“Blessings,” Korra cheers as the wheaty liquid sloshes over onto the bar. She gives herself a generous pour and drinks half of it before the foam even settles.

“Woah, Korra, I didn’t know you drank like that,” Bolin says affectionately. Everyone in Chicago, and probably the tri-state area, knows that he has a crush on Korra, it’s evident in his fawning. She ignores him and keeps gulping.

“Usually...” Asami twists her face into a shocked gape, “she doesn’t.” By her best calculations, Korra will be blacked out by midnight.

A devilish grin sprawls across Mako’s face as a fond memory comes to the front of his mind. “Well there was the night she finished that bypass surgery and took six shots of...what was it? Oh yeah, Fireball. Took six shots of cinnamon piss and started telling us how sexy Tenzin’s wife is.”

Korra starts choking on her drink and some beer squirts from her nose. A terrible burn lights her face up and she flushes red from hot, shameful embarrassment. “Mako! We don’t talk about that anymore,” she gasps between coughs.

“Sorry, just wanted to keep the record straight,” he laughs despite her struggle to breathe.

Asami is just as tickled but she rubs Korra’s back until she catches her breath. “Dying at a bar full of doctors would be really dumb, Tots.”

Korra glares at her out the corner of her slit eyes. “I hate all of you.”

They finish the pitchers in celebration of Korra’s successful popliteal surgery. It was all anyone was talking about in their corner of the hospital. Residents were rarely given lead on such technically advanced surgeries, and Korra led hers without incident. Even Lin came down to the residents locker room to congratulate her, “I’m impressed, which puts you in rarified air.” 

Korra figures she’s a shoo-in for Tenzin and Kuvira’s study.

Sometime around midnight, Mako and Bolin carefully guide a loose-legged Korra back to her apartment a few blocks down the street, and Baatar picks Asami up, which means he also picks up the check. “I understand why you like Korra, she’s rather intelligent underneath her witless exterior, but I’m not so sure about the other two,” Baatar scoffs as he watches the three friends stumble down the sidewalk.

Asami leans across the center console of their BMW and kisses the angle of Baatar’s jaw. “Actually, they're all idiots. But, they’re _my_ idiots.” 

He exhales a breathy laugh and accepts that explanation for what it is.

* * *

**5:42AM // Little Italy // Korra’s apartment**

The sun is barely out, the sky is a grim orange color, and the city is quiet outside of Korra’s window. Her alarm goes off most mornings at 6AM, but a shrill ringing rips her from her slumber. 

Her hand flounders around the side table as she blindly reaches to stop the noise, a few pens and her glasses fall to the ground before she finds her phone. “This better be Uber Eats bringing me a wheatgrass smoothie and pancakes for my hangover,” she rasps into the phone.

“Get up!” Asami yells. “Beifong’s resident dropped out of her AAA today and she’s asking for you. Get here now.”

The news electrocutes Korra’s body. She sits straight up and forces her mind to focus on Asami’s words, hangover be damned. “Lin or Kuvira?”

“Why the hell would the Chief of Surgery be doing a AAA? It’s Kuvira, and you have about 30 minutes before she realizes you aren’t changing in the locker room.”

“Why does she think I’m in the locker room?” Korra puts her phone on speaker and starts throwing on clothes. She’ll have to steal a toothbrush from the supply room in the long-term recovery wing. No time for hygiene. 

“Because I’m dumb enough to cover for you. Hurry the fuck up,” Asami urges against her better judgement.

“Thanks, Tits. Be there in 10.” Korra hangs up, dumps some kibble in her cat’s bowl, and literally runs out the door.

* * *

**11:25AM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgical Wing**

“Good morning, Dr. Beifong,” Zhu Li says from her seat at the OR computer. She’s Kuvira’s favorite perioperative nurse and easily the most experienced in the building. No one runs an OR like Zhu Li.

“Good morning. It's a beautiful day to cheat death,” Kuvira replies, hands held precariously in the air, sanitized and ready for gowns and gloves. Mako meets Kuvira at the door and dons her with a surgical gown, sterile gloves, and a face shield. There are a few trembling medical students in the corner of the room doing their best to stay out the way. “Who do we have here,” Kuvira asks softly. She has no patience for residents but a substantial soft spot for the students.

They all introduce themselves and manage to survive a bit of small talk about their clerkship thus far. “Well, welcome to OR 200. When I ask you to do something I need quick decisive action, especially if I’m asking you all to move. Understood?” They all nod nervously.

Kuvira checks in with Zhu Li, looks over all the consents, cracks a few jokes to lessen everyone's nerves, and suddenly realizes there’s something missing. “Where the hell is my resident?”

The door swings open and Korra busts in with a sweaty forehead and disheveled scrubs. “I’m here!”

“I have half the mind to kick you off this case, Dr. Korra.”

Korra steals herself with a few reassuring looks from Mako as he helps her get ready. Kuvira is exceptionally nice to him, and all the nurses for that matter, but he’s seen the things she’s done for minor guffaws in her OR. He takes a deep breath hoping it will inspire Korra to do the same before trying to talk her way back into the attending’s good graces. 

“My apologies, Dr. Beifong. There...uh...weren’t any scrubs when I swiped.” It’s an awful excuse, especially for a woman who plans for such inconveniences, but it sticks.

“Get here early next time. Tardiness can be deadly in our field.” Kuvira turns her back to Korra, returning her focus on the unconscious patient. “You,” she points at a student. “Take this position.” She directs them to her side where first assist typically stands. 

By the time Korra is aware of what's happening, she’s forced to stand across the table with the rest of the medical students. She hasn’t been in this spot since her fourth year of med school, it’s a gut punch that she’s forced to accept.

“Who can tell me why we’re doing an open repair and not an EVAR today,” Kuvira asks as she takes a scalpel between fingers, applying perfect, even pressure. The blade glides from xiphoid to navel, and beads of blood give way to a red, fleshy gash cut through to the fatty tissue underneath. Kuvira swaps her blades out before continuing deeper.

The students aren’t brave enough to step into the spotlight so Korra takes her shot. “Indications for open repair include asymptomatic aneurysms greater than 5.5 cms, rapidly expanding aneurysms detected via ult—”

“Wrong,” Kuvira says blankly.

“No,” Korra retorts, scanning Kuvira’s masked face in hopes of finding some sign of jest. “I memorized these indications years ago.”

“Perhaps that’s why you’re wrong.” The patient’s abdomen splits open, organs exposed and vulnerable to the slightest miscalculation. “Is this a male patient, Dr. Korra?”

Blue, panicked eyes drift toward Mako who’s at his station shaking his head furiously. “Fuck,” Korra sighs. “This patient is female, 42 years old, comorbid for DM2 and chronic edema.”

“Exactly. This woman has three children, one of which will be graduating from college next year. Her husband died saving someone else’s family from a forest fire. She’s been rapidly losing weight trying to treat her diabetes—”

“Which puts her at risk for sclerotic vessels throwing clots.”

There’s an undetectable pause in Kuvira’s movements as she swipes the cauterizer. She would never admit it, but that was impressive. “Glad to have you paying attention, finally. This patient is more than a body on the table. She is a person, with loved ones, and purpose. We are not surgeons today, we are makers of fate. If you can’t rise to the occasion, then leave.”

A dry heave tickles at the back of Korra’s throat, but she swallows it before it can escape. This isn’t her first surgery with a tough attending, she just needs to buckle down. “I understand, Dr. Beifong.”

“Good. Switch with our student doctor so he can learn how to hold the protractors.”

Once she’s settled into first assist, Korra finds her groove. The medical students are given the grueling job of protracting the abdominal wall and intestines to free the trunk of the aorta. The aneurysm is dangerously wide and involves the right iliac artery. The anesthesiologist hangs one bag of blood, then another, then another. Hours pass while Korra and Kuvira remove the injured vessel and replace it with a graft.

There’s a moment near the end of the operation where Korra catches herself staring at Kuvira’s hands. They are so beautifully delicate, and dexterous, and capable. Lifting, pulling, sewing, healing. Maybe, just maybe, there is a bit of magic in the work she does. 

Korra’s eyes drift from her own sutures for a second too long. Her needle punctures a lumbar artery, and a thread thin geyser of blood jets into the air. Scarlet droplets splatter across the lamps, and curtains, and gowns. “Shit,” she hisses reaching for the cauterizer. 

“Don’t,” Kuvira warns, grabbing Korra’s wrist before she can singe the tiny hole. “That vessel is paper thin, you’ll sever it entirely. Move!”

Without thinking, Kuvira pushes Korra away and begins to bark out orders for blood, reduced heart rate, and a clean lamp. Zhu Li is at her side in an instant, moving almost in unison with the attending. 

Korra stumbles backward and bumps into the utensil cart, causing a clamber that startles the students that have been mortified into stillness. “I suggest every single one of you uses Dr. Korra as a lesson of what _not_ to do, and follows my instructions.”

Somehow everything has become rushed and slowed down all at once. The monitors ring out warnings of crashing vitals but Kuvira holds her composure, packing gauze, advising the preferred dose of digoxin, mending the nearly invisible wound Korra created. Somewhere underneath the panic, Korra is awestruck by her superior’s command of the OR. It traps her against the cart, unable to act on her own blunder. 

37 uncertain minutes later, Kuvira backs away from the operating table and pulls off her gown and gloves. “Dr. Korra, I trust that you know how to close without killing my patient.” She drops the bloodied surgical wear into the biohazard bin and leaves the OR.

* * *

**5:07PM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgical Wing**

The only thing left in the room with Korra are a few overflowing biohazard bins and the humming vitals monitor. Her scrub top is stained a reddish brown from the blood that soaked through her gown. Her hands are clammy and there’s a nagging headache building behind her temples. “How did I screw this up so massively?” she asks herself, thinking no one else was around. 

A janitor walks in with his keys jingling against his hip. “I’ve seen worse,” he says with all the compassion of a grave digger. He’s clearly witnessed much more deadly sins.

Korra leaves him to his work preparing the OR for its next surgery. The halls are noisy with doctors, interns, and nurses, all going about their days as if she hadn’t just derailed her shot at joining the biggest clinical trial since viagra hit the market. She figures she’ll lick her wounds at Hawkeye’s later, but for now, she needs to get some notes done and catch up with her medical students.

Kuvira appears out of nowhere at the end of an empty hall and backs Korra against a wall. Her usual demure is gone, leaving fury and rage in its place. “I ought to have you removed from this program.”

The impact of hitting the tiles shocks Korra’s senses, her chest tightens with a mixture of fear and disdain. She can accept that she made a mistake, but being bombarded out in the open feels personal. 

“Dr. Tenzin may have filled your head with some whimsical idea of what medicine is — what surgery is — but let me assure you, he was _wrong.”_

“Hey, I know I fucked up but things happen. Your perfect record is still intact.” Korra speaks with more vitriol than she intends, and Kuvira does not take kindly to it.

“I couldn’t care less about that record. What matters to me is sending my patients home _alive,_ and not in god damn body bags. I suggest you start acting like a doctor instead of a high school prom queen.” She has gotten so close to Korra that it’s impossible to see her full face. Their knit brows mirror each other, frustrated breaths interfusing between them. 

It’s such a dumb thought, and Korra wishes she wasn’t thinking it, but Kuvira’s breath is incredibly fresh after a 5 hour surgery. She reflexively inhales the scent and relaxes her face. Even if she wants to tell Kuvira off, it’ll cost her a job, so she humbles herself to the best of her ability. “Sure thing, Dr. Beifong.”

Kuvira’s jaw clenches, making the chiseled muscle of her mandible flutter under the tension. She glares at Korra until she feels adequately feared. Her lip curls into a disappointed snarl before she walks off and leaves Korra to fume in the dimly lit hall. 

* * *

**8:17PM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgery Floor**

“Hey, kid. You hungry?” Lin asks as she appears in the doorway of Kuvira’s office. The younger Beifong looks up from her copy of the American Surgical Journal and forces a smile, the lines of chronic stress shine through. 

“No, I’m okay,” she lies.

Lin walks in and closes the book. Kuvira’s head shoots up to protest, but she can’t do much when Lin is looking at her with that maternal look. _You have to eat,_ her face conveys silently.

“Alright, alright,” Kuvira acquiesces. She tidies her desk and shoves a few dirty travel mugs into her work bag. She doesn’t go home as often as she should so the dishes pile up. Lin pulls a stick of gum out of the inside breast pocket of her white coat and offers it to her girl. Kuvira takes it. She always does. Lin unwraps another for herself, and they quietly chew gum on the way to their favorite Thai restaurant. 

Lin heard through petty hospital gossip what happened with Kuvira’s AAA. She knows every detail and every painstaking second of the surgery is replaying in Kuvira’s mind. She lets her think through it, and around it, and eventually she lets it go. By the time they get to the restaurant, they’ve picked up some casual small talk about Tenzin’s pesky morning meetings and the new fiscal year for the hospital. 

Good food, better wine, and a few inappropriate jokes erase the grit of the day from Kuvira’s features. She laughs, and dines, and thanks Lin for dragging her out of the office. 

“What, you think I’d let you shrivel up in that stale ass closet they assigned you?”

“I asked for that office, Lin.”

The older woman scoffs. “Yeah, well, you deserve a corner office like mine.”

“You’re the Chief of Surgery, there’s only one office like yours.” Kuvira peels open a fortune cookie as Lin rolls her eyes. 

“You’ll be Chief before you know it. Hell, you’re better than I was at your age.” She signals for the check and starts rummaging around her bag for her wallet. “You’re the best this hospital has ever seen.”

“The _country,”_ Kuvira corrects, catching Lin slightly off guard. When it clicks, Lin laughs. “Indeed,” she agrees warmly, a prideful smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “The best this country has ever seen.”

They say their goodbyes outside and take separate Ubers home. Kuvira unfolds the fortune and reads it under her breath. She’s not superstitious but you can never be too careful.

_Some friends disguise themselves as foes, open your heart to the greatness around you._

“That’s really….dumb,” she whispers in the backseat of a Nissan Altima. Her driver asks if she’d like the AC or the windows, and she opts for the cool of air of the night. They ride in silence the rest of their way back to her place, the streetlights and ambient sounds of traffic almost lull her to sleep. It was a long day.


	2. coagulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hospital proves to be a small place, and Korra can't keep avoiding Kuvira.

_We all have our reasons for getting into medicine. TV shows and movies make this career seem like a noble quest, as if we’re all selfless white knights, but I can assure you that the truth is much less palatable. Sorry to burst your bubble._

_Every single doctor, whether they admit or not, wants_ that feeling. _That tingling behind the ears when they write out their letters, or shrug on their coat, or get called upon for expertise. There’s no job in the world like saving lives, and that type of reverence appeals to the vain at heart._

_Don’t get me wrong, “do no harm” comes first, but there’s always ulterior motives. Me? I wanted to prove some people wrong. I wanted to embarrass every teacher that ever told me I was a handful, that I needed to focus more, that I wouldn’t make it far if I didn’t get my act together._

_As far back as I can remember, I’ve struggled sitting still. Long classes, drawn out lectures, pages and pages of reading — none of it made sense to me. I needed something more interactive and fast pace. I needed someone to listen to me when I was struggling to be “normal.”_

_Turns out, no one listens if you don’t have money. I didn’t realize until much later but we were dirt poor. My parents couldn’t afford a psychiatric evaluation, or a learning aid, or tuition at those schools with modular learning and actual student engagement. We barely managed to keep the lights on in our two bedroom apartment on the south side. I had to stumble my way through the public school system until 9th grade where I met Mrs. Pema. She was the first teacher to notice that I was different, the first one that actually cared._

_She didn’t have to, but she spared no expense helping me find my strengths and overcome my weaknesses. For that, I’m deeply appreciative. She was always so kind, gentle, nurturing. When I wanted to cut corners or give up, she made me commit to myself and my success._

_Her husband thought my quick wit and curiosity would make for a good scientist, and he was absolutely right._ _I figured out how to channel my excess energy into organized sports, and manage my rapid thought processing with experimental design._ _I finished high school second in my class,_ with honors, _and_ _I could have gone to any college for any major I wanted. I was the quintessential student athlete._

_Back then, I was spending more time at Tenzin and Pema’s house than my own, and one day the big guy came home from work, dropped a stack of pre-med brochures on the table, and told me to pick a program. I laughed in his face at first, thinking my chaotic ass would never survive in that type of environment, but he insisted. I chose the University of Chicago, just 15 minutes from my parents and 30 minutes from Tenzin’s job, because they were offering direct admission into med school if I didn’t shit the bed in undergrad. It seemed like the clear choice to make._

_I’ve grown to love medicine — the challenge, the mystery, the undeniable joy of seeing someone get better. But what I love most is that I proved everybody wrong. I’m_ still _proving people wrong, and that fuels me everyday._

_That’s my ulterior motive. That’s what gets me up in the morning. I long for the sweet sound of silenced critics._

* * *

**7:46AM // Rush University Medical Center // Copley Auditorium**

The hospital feels like a sprawling, living organism most days. Important things happening in one department are inconsequential in another. The board oversees everything, a lot like the brain controls the body, but everyone has an individual job to do. The only time the separate parts come together as one, is during grand rounds.

The medical students always arrive first, it looks bad when they’re late. The interns herd them into the auditorium like stressed out parents before returning to the hall to gossip and fill their coffee mugs. The more senior residents arrive next, sleep deprived and aggravated. Attendings are last to file in, and they stare at their subordinates until someone gives up a seat so they can enjoy the presentation.

Asami and Korra chat outside the auditorium before things get started. “Who’s talking today?” Korra asks as she smacks the back of Asami’s hand, stopping her from grabbing a cinnamon roll. “Aht aht, too many calories.”

“Bite me,” Asami groans. The bags under her eyes speak volumes about her lack of sleep. She grabs the cinnamon roll, glares at Korra, and stuffs half of it in her mouth. She tries to reply with the half the half-chewed pastry filling her mouth.

“Swallow first, you savage.” Korra plucks a piece of lint from Asami’s hair and flicks it to the ground. “And maybe get some sleep, you look like shit.”

After she swallows, Asami tries again, “I was saying I don’t know who’s talking today. I have way too much going on, I can't keep track of grand rounds right now. I’m just here so I don’t get fined.”

“Is that a Marshawn Lynch quote?”

“Probably. You and Mako are starting to rub off on me.” Asami crams the rest of her cinnamon roll into her mouth, grabs a donut, and heads toward the auditorium. The unhuman noise that comes from Korra’s stomach reminds her that she should eat too.

“Save me a seat, I’ll be there in a second,” she tells Asami before beginning the internal debate of donuts versus bagels. Her finger hovers between them like it’s the most important decision she’ll make all day.

“Better hurry up, she’s coming,” Mako whispers over her shoulder. Her eyes get wide, certainly _she_ means Kuvira. Their botched surgical collaboration was almost two weeks ago, but they’ve been steering clear of each other ever since. Really, it’s just been Korra checking around corners and ducking into utility closets whenever the attending is near.

She slowly turns her head to see how much time she has to flee, and realizes there's not enough. Before she can grab a donut and blend in with the masses of white coats, Kuvira is just steps away from the table. “You’re really bad at hurrying,” Mako murmurs out the side of his mouth.

Looking down is all Korra can manage to do before Kuvira is beside her, browsing over the breakfast selections, and tapping the lid of her coffee cup as she thinks. Avoiding eye contact is Korra's last resort, and unfortunately, it’s not enough to spare her.

Kuvira offers them a raspy and aloof greeting. “Morning, Mako...Dr. Korra."

"Good morning, Dr. Beifong,” Mako replies with an unnaturally wide smile. There’s a brief pause where Korra considers being cold and ignoring Kuvira, possibly carving out some revenge for the heated exchange they had in the back halls of the surgical wing. A sharp elbow to her kidney strikes those thoughts from her head.

“Good morning,” Korra manages to say despite the pain in her side. “Should be a good talk today, I hear great things about this presenter,” she adds casually. Her words almost sound unaffected, but there’s the faintest undertone of spite, enough to catch Kuvira's attention.

“I thought today’s grand rounds were for previewing the AMA Conference at Hopkins?” Of course Kuvira knows that Korra has no clue what's on the schedule, but she can't resist the urge to make a resident sweat. The pink tint of Korra’s cheeks is wonderfully satisfying, and the way her jaw slacks as she scrambles for a response is sweet vindication.

The silence becomes stiff as Korra thinks, and swallows, and thinks some more, turning Kuvira’s amusement into half-genuine concern. “Are you okay, Dr. Korra?”

A dry, choked out laugh is the first thing out Korra’s mouth before she says, "Totally! I must have forgotten that was today. Thanks for the reminder, you’re always so good with those.”

Mako lightly pushes Korra towards the doors to put an end to her awkward rambling.

“You're the best, Dr. Beifong. Those muffins sure look good, why don’t we let you get back to that, and we’ll see you inside,” Mako suggests hastily, guiding Korra away with a firm hand on the small of her back.

“Right...see if you can help Dr. Korra with... _whatever it is_ she’s going through.” Kuvira shakes her head and turns to find a suitable muffin. The two friends scurry away to safety.

* * *

**9:37AM // Rush University Medical Center // Copley Auditorium**

The faster Korra can elbow her way out of the auditorium the less chance she has of running into Kuvira again. There’s a stubborn voice in her head that won’t let her forget the surgery, the reprimand, and the brazen criticism of her relationship with Tenzin. _Prom queen_ echoes through her mind whenever she has a moment of peace, it’s unnerving.

Usually Korra bounces back from these sort of things in a few days. Dwelling is so uncharacteristic for her that it’s beginning to shake her confidence. Kuvira has crawled under her skin and settled there, festering like an infected wound.

Korra leaves grand rounds and makes her way to the residents office. There’s a few medical students studying at the tables, a snoring intern is sleeping on the couch, and something pungent is spinning in the microwave. She takes a free seat and the desk of empty computers and pulls up the surgery schedule, desperate to find something to scrub in on.

“Beifong, Beifong, Beifong,” she reads out loud. Every single surgery worth her time will be led by Kuvira. “This woman is going to be the death of me,” she says to herself.

“Dr. Korra,” a small voice calls from behind her. She jumps and turns to see who it is. A young looking medical student is standing there, hands clasped around a small spiral bound notebook, peering at her through thick prescription glasses.

“What’s up?” she asks, the level tone of her voice belies her inner turmoil.

“We have to present to Dr. Beifong before our shelf exam, so we were wondering if you had some time to review with us after clinic?” There’s an innocence to the question that Korra finds endearing.

“Old Beifong or young Beifong?” she asks cautiously. 

“Uhhh, Chief Beifong?”

Korra lets out a sigh of relief and agrees to help. She's in need of a distraction, and drilling the kids will do until she finds a worthwhile surgery.

* * *

**12:14PM // Rush University Medical Center // Cafe**

Tenzin swipes his ID to buy lunch for a few weary interns from his department. Instead of returning to his office, he looks out into the dining area in search of a good seat. There’s a few groups of residents from different specialties, some visiting families passing their time with food, and a couple lowly medical students speed reading Cochrane’s between french fries. Tenzin is one of the only attendings that eats lunch in the cafe. _It makes you seem more human and approachable,_ he explains whenever asked about it. Most residents don’t care where the attendings eat, but everyone appreciates his willingness to spare a few meal swipes.

He spots Lin eating alone at a small table in the corner, a folded newspaper in one hand and a coffee in her other. He walks over and stands there until she acknowledges his presence. “What do you want, Tenzin?”

“I’m starting to realize where Kuvira gets her charm from,” he says sarcastically. Lin doesn’t look up from reading until he takes the seat across from her. She blinks unamused as he settles in. “Have you considered that you’re the problem in this equation, not us?” She closes her paper and picks up her fork to stab her room temperature food. The tap of her utensil is loud and unpleasant in Tenzin’s ears, he grits his teeth knowing Lin is aware of his pet peeve.

“I have, actually…on several occasions.”

“And what did you decide?” Lin asks.

Tenzin chooses diplomacy over bickering with his ex. “I decided that having a few spirited discussions is an acceptable price for working with such talented surgeons.”

Lin rolls her eyes, and they almost spring from their sockets. “Do you ever just say what you’re thinking, or does kissing ass come naturally to you?”

“I seem to remember that you didn’t mind my ass kissing, once upon a time.”

An indistinct blush warms Lin’s cheeks, and she checks her periphery for listening ears. She and Tenzin broke up decades ago, but the inexplicable effect he has on her still persists. “Bite me,” she shoots back to disguise her affliction.

“Now now, Lin, no need for hostilities,” he replies with a smirk that he reserves for their chats, a look that is both smug and comely.

Lin points her fork at Tenzin with a spiked brow, resisting the urge to smile back. “I’ll show you hostile next time your rookie botches a Beifong surgery.”

 _This again?_ At this point, Tenzin’s patience is being held together by a flimsy thread of professionalism. There’s only so much flack he can take from the Beifong women.

“What do you two have against my mentees? They’ve earned their spots here in the hospital like everyone else,” he asserts with waning confidence.

“You know good and well what we’re saying, you’ve always been like this — you channel your empathy into coddling. I’m sure those two are great doctors, but how about you let them swim in the deep end without the water wingies?” She goes back to picking through her salad, barely interested in Tenzin’s reply.

Still, he’s compelled to rebut. “I’ll have you know, I’m only providing guidance for Jinora and Korra, and—”

“Tenzin,” Lin cuts in with a cherry tomato speared at the end of her fork, aiming it across the table. “I don’t care, I just want you to keep them out of my hair, and out of Kuvira’s way. She’s got enough on her plate with the clinical trial, and the AMA conference coming up.”

Tenzin furls his brow curiously at the news Lin unknowingly shares. In recent years the hospital has sent generalists and internalists to Hopkins, not surgeons. For all their medical heroics, most surgeons are awful with charm and human interaction, and the Beifongs are no exception. In fact, they _prove_ the rule. Tenzin wonders how, and why, Kuvira was chosen to present in Baltimore. 

“All anyone wants to hear about is her hot streak. Five years is a long time to make it without a casualty,” Lin explains with no exaggeration. It really _is_ all anyone in the surgery field is talking about.

“Indeed,” he agrees before getting back to his meal. A bright idea takes hold of his mind, but Tenzin prefers not to share it with Lin. He prefers to enjoy their friendly silence and finish his lunch.

* * *

**10:02PM // Little Italy // Hawkeye’s Bar**

Hawkeye’s is a dingy little bar near the hospital. All the tables crammed into the small space are probably a fire hazard, and the oversized flat screens mounted on every wall could induce seizures with their obnoxious glare. The bar top is always sticky from spilled drinks and condensation, possibly a few other fluids that no one wants to think about. There’s high turnover with the servers, and it’s impossible to keep track of anyone’s name except for Wu — his dad owns the bar and he works almost every second shift, though _works_ is a loose term in his case.

There’s nothing gaudy or dazzling to be seen in the whole place, it’s just a few years of poor upkeep from being a dive bar. Still, it’s become a watering hole for the hospital employees. Everyone from the charge nurses to the administrators stops by to decompress, or to forget. Medicine can be grueling, liquor is an efficient elixir.

Fridays like this one are the busiest nights. Half the students will have Saturday off, a lucky few residents will get some rest too, and the attendings will work peacefully from home all weekend; it’s the perfect day to imbibe. When Korra, Mako, Asami, and Bolin meander in from the street, they’re annoyed to find the place overrun with third- and fourth-year med students.

The Office of Student Affairs buys a few kegs of beer every so often in an attempt to keep students happy. The early goings of medical training can be like a fever dream — ill-equipped classmates disappear, the limits of a sleepless mind are tested, embarrassment, failure, and success all blur into one nauseating state of mind. 45 gallons of beer doesn’t do much to support student wellness, but drinking away a bad day, a bad week, a bad semester? It’s better than nothing.

Korra remembers her own struggles trying to stay afloat those four years. If it wasn’t for Tenzin’s mentorship and Asami’s steadying presence, she might have succumbed to her inclinations on her darker days — she suffered through migraines, and night sweats, and brutal fatigue that was never quelled by sleep. The shadows got closest just before her first board exam. Everything she wanted seemed distant and unattainable, life felt like grains of sand sifting through her fingers, and she considered letting the rigor bury her alive.

Nights like the one unfolding in Hawkeye’s, only enabled the worst of her attempts at coping. It all flashes through her mind and the suddenness of her reverie makes her wince. “Do you guys want to go somewhere else?” Korra asks wishfully.

Asami gauges how much beer is left based on the inebriated wobble of the nearest trust fund baby in a white coat, it seems like things are just getting started with enough alcohol to go around.

If she had known why Korra wanted to leave she wouldn’t have protested, but Korra decides not to share.

“I don’t feel like walking all the way to Joe’s, and Vintage smells like piss,” Asami says. “Let’s just steal some wristbands and drink here.” She grabs Mako’s wrist, and he grabs Korra’s, and Bolin tries not to get separated shuffling behind them.

They weave through the crowd and find Wu pouring shots for some locals a few seats away. Mako leans over the counter and grabs four wristbands before Wu can stop him, earning a halfhearted frown. He winks at the bartender, quietly taking note of his subtly swanky outfit — too many earrings to count (all gold and bejeweled), a loose-fitting tank top with Rihanna screen printed on the front, ripped designer jeans, and combat boots. Wu’s short — even in his clunky shoes — and slim, and sinewy, and worth a lingering eye. _Another time,_ Mako tells himself, blinking away his indecent thoughts before divvying out the wristbands.

The fourth-year class president gives the group a dirty look but resolves to keep his mouth shut, med students learn at their residents’ mercy, so it’s best to play nice.

“One for you, one for you, and one for you,” Mako chimes like a responsible parent. They snag a table an arm’s length from the nearest keg and begin their night with a round of shitty pale ale.

A few rounds in, Korra stops caring about discretion. Her sober grievances become drunken ramblings about Kuvira. “She’s everywhere — every big surgery, every lounge, every grand rounds. It’s driving me crazy.”

“You’re blowing this out of proportion,” Mako yells over the blare of shitty rock music. “Kuvira probably forgot all about it by now, you should too.”

“Yeah, Korra,” Asami adds. “You’re not the first resident to nick an artery, and you won’t be the last. Stop being so hard on yourself.”

Korra finishes her third drink. Or was it her fourth? _“She’s_ being hard on myself.”

“I don’t think that’s proper grammar,” Bolin corrects.

“Whatever! You all know what I mean. The way she looked at me in that hall…it did something to my brain.” Korra isn’t very articulate this far into the night and her point is getting lost in translation.

“I’ll be honest, Tots, it sounds like you want to fuck her,” Asami says playfully. Mako and Bolin look away before their eyes can concur.

“Wh—I don’t! I—she…” Korra feels the skin of her neck flush as her brain tries to process Asami’s words. She was certain that she hated Kuvira, wanted her working in a different field or a different hospital, wished she had never met her. But she also has a vivid memory of the landscape of Kuvira’s mouth, and that undermines her disdain. “No no no, I do not want that woman to fuck me.”

“Interesting…I didn’t say you wanted _her_ to fuck _you,_ but I can see the appeal.” Asami levels a scandalous smirk at Korra as she turns bright red.

“Whose side are you on?” Korra whines.

All three friends laugh sympathetically. Mako lays a comforting hand on Korra’s shoulder and rubs away some of the tension. “We’re definitely on your side, Korra, even if your side is horny as hell.” That gets her to chuckle, finally. 

The truth is, Kuvira isn’t the first older woman she’s had mixed emotions about. “Why does my brain light up like a Christmas tree every time I meet a hot woman that thinks I’m an idiot?” Korra holds her cup out in Bolin’s direction so he can get it refilled. He happily obeys.

“You’re not an idiot,” Mako refutes. “But everything else you said is true.”

“How about I get you a big ortho case to work on,” Asami proposes as consolation for Korra’s woes. “Dr. Varrick is nuts, he’ll let you do an entire scoliosis correction by yourself if you play your cards right.”

The last of Korra’s fourth drink (or fifth) disappears into her mouth. She slams the cup down, leans over the table, and pulls Asami into a sloppy kiss. “I fucking love you, Tits.”

“Get a room,” Mako says with dramatic dismay. Korra quickly turns to him, traps his face between her palms so his cheeks are smooshed, and kisses him too. “You don’t have to be a brat, Mako, you can just ask for a kiss.”

Bolin starts to make a joke of his own in hopes of earning one too, but Korra says “no” before grabbing his beer, and finishing it.

* * *

**9:25PM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgery Floor**

The weekend doesn’t last long enough, Monday and Tuesday barely register in Korra’s mind, and Wednesday passes by as a blur. Korra just has to survive Thursday night on-call, then she can completely focus on her upcoming surgery with Dr. Varrick.

“Page me if room three dips below 95% sat, I don’t want to take any chances,” Korra instructs a charge nurse. She finishes up hand-off with the residents and sets off to find an empty on-call room.

There’s something very peaceful about a quiet hospital floor. The constant movement during the day creates a droning ambient noise, and without it there’s only the soft buzz of the ceiling lights. Korra enjoys the silence as she walks.

She rounds another corner, and her phone vibrates in her pocket. She unlocks it to read the text from Tenzin —

 **_Tenzin_ 👨🏼‍🦲 _:_ ** _Have you ever met Dr. Tarrlok?_

 **Korra:** The Surgery Chair? No, I don’t think so

 **_Tenzin_ 👨🏼‍🦲 _:_ ** _That’ll change tomorrow. He’ll be attending your ortho surgery with Varrick_

 **Korra:** Oh shit! Really?

 _**Tenzin**_ 👨🏼‍🦲 _ **:** Must you curse? _

_**Tenzin** _ **👨🏼‍🦲** _**:** And yes, really. He would like to see your work for himself _

**Korra:** I’ll be sure to bring my A game

_**Tenzin** _ **👨🏼‍🦲** _**:** That’s the spirit! I’ll see you bright and early _

Korra begins typing her response near the door to her favorite room. A figure appears in her peripheral vision but she doesn’t register it fast enough. “Umph, sorry,” she says as they collide, looking up from her phone apologetically.

By some twisted turn of fate, it’s Kuvira. She looks mildly annoyed at first glance, but there’s a glint of intrigue in her eyes. The two doctors stare at each other briefly, each of them weighing their options, considering confrontation or reconciliation. Kuvira speaks first, her voice a sturdy toll of aplomb. “Were you going in here?” she asks, pointing to the door beside them. 

Korra shoves her hands into her oversized pockets, and tells herself to be calm, to be stoic, but she struggles to execute. “Y—yeah. I’m on-call until 6.”

A few loose hairs frame Kuvira’s tired face, she checks her watch, and quickly does the math. Korra’s got a long eight hours ahead of her, and Kuvira remembers her nights stealing winks of sleep in twin sized bunk beds during residency. It surprises her that Korra didn’t switch overnights so she can really rest before the ortho surgery. Perhaps, she is more dedicated than Kuvira thinks.

“I’ll find another room,” she offers, stepping aside so Korra can open the door. 

“Oh.” Korra’s eyebrows meet in a surprised wrinkle. “Thank you.”

“No need for thanks. Good luck on your surgery tomorrow, Dr. Korra.” Kuvira turns to leave and doesn’t look back when Korra asks if she’ll be watching from the gallery tomorrow.

“No,” Kuvira responds flatly, then disappears into a stairwell. The heavy clink of the door closing makes Korra jump before she settles into her disappointment. Some part of her wants Kuvira there so her redemption is immediate. Hearing 'no'turns her stomach into a flustered knot. She can't help but to stand in the hall, dazed again, wondering how she can escape the spell of Kuvira Beifong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Korra being a low income student that struggled with mental health in medical school -- we call that ProjectingTM. 
> 
> Me hinting at a new ship every chapter? More likely than you think.
> 
> Next week, we see how this ortho surgery goes and we meet an unhinged Dr. Varrick.


	3. inoculation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Korra takes on a complicated spinal surgery and Tenzin pulls some strings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's porn in here!!

_ My father, Dr. Aang, changed the landscape of medicine in this city. As a bright-eyed young doctor, he discovered a broken system that ignored the most vulnerable among us, so he set out to transform the healthcare system in Chicago. He was the Director of Operations for the County Hospital for 10 years, and the President of the Public Health Department for another 20. He retired at an old age, accomplished and esteemed.  _

_ Countless low-income families got the care they deserved because of his ambitious initiatives. He believed in treating all people as equals, no matter where they lived, worked, or went to school. To him, medicine was about healing and equality. He was a truly noble man. _

_ A legacy such as his is difficult to live up to but every day I pray that I’m making him proud. I impart upon my children and my mentees the things he taught me — duty, service, and compassion. My father’s name carries a weight that is burdensome to bear, but I carry it with honor. _

_ Some days, though, I must face a harrowing truth, the other side of the coin. Like Aang, I’ve given much of myself to this career, and I’m afraid some of me will be lost forever. The nights away from home, the days I’ve spent mourning other people’s loved ones, the ghosts of my failures haunting my dreams — all of it has left me weathered deep beneath the surface of my tranquil facade.  _

_ There are moments I missed that I’ll never get back. Jinora’s first steps the day of my first board exam; Ikki’s kindergarten graduation the weekend I presented in New York alongside Chairman Tarrlok; the day Pema found out we were having our first son while I was being honored for my medical diplomacy in Paris. I’ve saved so many lives, and been recognized for my work ten times over, but experiencing my own life from a distance is the price I’ve paid.  _

_ The paradox of this career — success with unimaginable costs — is the foundation of a great brotherhood amongst physicians. We are all family and hospitals are our sanctuaries where our sacrifice is truly understood. Inside those walls the oath of _ primum non nocere  _ is binding, and all other devotions simply must come second.  _

_ To be a civil servant is to have the mind and body sever, split between two realities — family and career, the greater good and personal gain, life and death. Being a doctor is not easy. The internal conflict never ends, but I find solace in the company of my colleagues that do this work by my side, in knowing that my children can speak of my accomplishments with pride, and my wife...my wife is taken care of, she lives a life without need.  _

_ I cannot pretend that I’ve done everything perfectly during my long career, but I’ve done my absolute best to live up to immense expectations. I know where I faltered, and I live with those mistakes, but I’ve done all I could to be the man my father dreamed I would be. _

* * *

**10:58AM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgery Floor**

Baatar memorized the maze-like layout of the surgical floor shortly after Asami started her residency at Rush. That was almost five years ago. He would bring her lunch between meetings at his architecture firm and quickly grew tired of getting lost. He’s always been somewhat of a perfectionist, which Asami thinks is endearing, and that drove him to sketch out a map of the place on the back of a business card. The amount of detail was uncanny, every hall and doorway drawn to scale, even the emergency exits were penciled in. He doesn’t use the card anymore, but he keeps it in his wallet tucked behind a picture of him and Asami outside the Museum of Science and Industry. It’s not clear why he saves it, with the curled edges and smudged led, but he’s always placed sentimental value in the oddest things. 

A few years ago, Asami found a letter from Kuvira folded under a desk lamp in Baatar’s office. She read it while he was at work, regrettably so, and realized why Baatar rarely talks about his past. Shortly before Kuvira started medical school, she wrote him an apology for leaving after the wedding, and bailing on Stanford, and breaking the promises they made as angry kids. Asami pretended she never saw it because the letter wasn’t meant for her, but she’ll never forget the short response Baatar wrote on the back, and presumably never sent; _ I’m sorry too, Vira. You always deserved much better.  _

There’s this mysterious and tender corner of Baatar’s brain where he scribbles out maps to find his lover, and keeps his apologies to himself to spare his loved one from more grief. It’s one of his best qualities, and the reason Asami chose him. Baatar was older, and shy, and such a nerd. But he was himself at all times, a rare and beautiful trait. 

“The guy forgot soy sauce, again. I should’ve checked the bag before I left,” Baatar laments as he unpacks a brown paper bag of cheap Chinese food. Asami is finishing a long email to the residents and hardly notices the complaint. “I got you General Tso chicken because they were out of Szechuan. Really, I don’t know why I keep ordering from this place. Dietary masochism perhaps.” At this point, Baatar is mostly talking to himself.

Asami finally looks up and laughs under her breath as the architect neatly opens the white cartons of rice, lays out napkins, and fiddles with the setup until it’s suitable for their 30 minute lunch date. She walks over as he unwraps the chopsticks and holds a pair out for her. “For the lady,” he says politely with a bowed head.

“Thank you.” Asami leans in to kiss his cheek and takes a seat across the table. “Full disclosure, I’m about to inhale this food so I can catch Korra’s surgery with Varrick. It will _ not  _ be ladylike.”

“Big case?” he asks.

“Super big! It’s a scoliosis correction, high level of technical difficulty, and Varrick is a loose canon. Literally _ anything  _ can happen.” Asami shovels rice into her mouth at an alarming speed, but Baatar doesn’t mind, he continues with his questions.

“That sounds right up Korra’s alley. Who’d you kick off the case to get it for her?”

Asami pauses, cheeks ballooning from too much food, and cuts her eyes at her husband. “You sound like Kuvira and Lin.”

“I’m just saying,” he levels cautiously.

“Saying what? That I treat Korra differently?”

“Yes.” Despite his dislike for the family’s reputation for bluntness, Baatar is undeniably frank. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to helping out friends. My family’s wealth was built on favors. But...let’s call a thing, a thing.”

“I hate when you’re smug _and_ right. Pick one,” Asami sasses. 

Baatar chuckles at her little pout stretched around her mouthful of food. “Yes, dear. I’ll just be smug.”

They move on to lighter subject matters — sending their laundry out, hosting the family for the holidays, paying bills. An offensively loud alarm let’s them know that Asami has to leave, and she gives Baatar an apologetic smile. “Do you mind cleaning up? I’ve gotta jet.”

“Of course not. Go ahead, tell Korra I said good luck.” 

Asami steals another kiss, salted with soy sauce but still pleasantly sweet. “I‘ll see you at home,” she says before rushing out.

The mess is easy to sweep into the take-out bag, and Baatar leaves the office shortly after his wife. He casually reads the floor directory as he waits for the elevator, and without thinking, his eyes drift to the line that reads _ Office 078 Dr. Beifong, Vascular Surgery.  _ He checks his watch and tries to remember when his next meeting starts. The doors slide open with a ding, but Baatar’s already halfway to Kuvira’s office.

* * *

**11:39AM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgery Floor**

“Can I come in?” Baatar asks softly, knocking on the doorframe of Kuvira’s office. Her head shoots up as she recognizes his voice.

“Baatar. I— what brings you here?” She means her office specifically, Kuvira’s more than aware that he frequents the surgery floor to have lunch with Asami, but he always neglects to make other stops.

“Lunch,” he replies, walking through the door, hands lightly hooked in his pockets. There’s a funny glare on the lens of his glasses, but he still looks cool and collected, as always. “Figured I’d come say hello, check on you, make sure you haven’t moved into this closet.”

“You sound like Lin,” Kuvira huffs. She likes her office and thinks it’s more than enough. She doesn’t need a big space to prove her worth as a professional.

“Apparently, I sound like a lot of people today,” Baatar jests before asking, “really though, how are you?”

Kuvira is struck by the genuine sound of his voice. She can’t remember the last time someone other than Lin asked her how she was doing. “I’m...okay, I suppose.” She shuffles some papers around her desk and reaches over to move her jacket from the chair in front of it, she doesn’t usually have guests for any length of time so her things are all over the place. “Excuse the mess.”

Baatar sits in the barely used armchair and probes further, following up on all the things he’s heard. He asks about her surgery streak, which Asami fawns over bi-weekly, and her upcoming trip to Baltimore, which Suyin told him about after chatting with Lin. In his own way, from a safe distance, he’s been keeping tabs on her, and that comforts Kuvira in a way she can’t explain.

As they talk, their shared sense of morbid humor takes over, and they find themselves laughing like they’re 13 again, when things were less...complicated. They poke fun at serious matters, and take petty things too seriously. They just click, they always have.

“I think I scared her half to death in that hall. I was livid,” Kuvira says of her run-in with Korra after The Surgery. 

“Poor kid, I’m pretty sure I’ve been on the receiving end of a similar scolding.” Baatar laughs as he pictures Kuvira fuming in Korra’s face, standing close enough to warrant a Title IX complaint. “Is that why you aren’t watching her big surgery like everyone else?”

On the surface, his question is harmless. How could he know that Kuvira has been mulling over the intricate details of that surgery, and her reaction to Korra’s mistake, every second her mind isn’t busy? There’s no way for him to guess that she’s remorseful, and angry, and somehow annoyingly intrigued by Korra. He unknowingly fans the dying embers of her inner conflict. 

“That surgery with Varrick is going to be a disaster, that’s why I’m not going. I have no interest in watching a train wreck.” Kuvira’s voice cracks just at the end of her declaration, and Baatar spots the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, hidden just below her forest green irises. 

“Or, are you being stubborn?”

“Don’t get smart with me,” she insists, her friendly demeanor shrinking away.

“Forgive me,” Baatar says with his hands up in surrender. He isn’t interested in a verbal shootout so he scales back. “I just know why you’re _ really  _ angry, and it’s not because a talented young doctor is a bit haphazard.”

Kuvira glares across the desk. “Okay then, tell me about my innermost thoughts, BJ.”

He cuts his eyes at the mention of his childhood nickname, spurring him to be a little too honest with Kuvira. “You’re angry because she reminds you of the recklessness you suppress so fervently. Your restraint is admirable, efficient, I would even say legendary, but you resent having to be like that all the time.”

His words trail and a thick tension engulfs the room. They quickly look away from each other, all their familiarity lost to the cold silence. Baatar isn’t wrong, Kuvira isn’t going to argue with him, and they aren’t going to unpack this — at least, not sober in the unforgiving light of day. Faux-siblings? Friends? Ex-lovers? Whatever their title is these days, it doesn’t include this type of reflection. Kuvira isn’t ready to see herself in the mirrors that Baatar always manages to hang in her subconscious.

Luckily, his phone saves them from the chore of finding an end to their brief reunion. “I’ve got to take this, and I should probably go.” 

He ignores the ringing long enough to share in a mundane farewell. He makes his exit and begins his short walk back to work. Kuvira stares at the empty chair for a few minutes, filing away the silly details of his visit — the hardy laughter, the woody cologne that hasn’t changed since high school, and the much needed honesty. 

Slowly, her eyes close, and she deliberates. What she’s planning to do goes against her reputation and strongest inclinations, but she inhales the thought of risk and exhales the apprehension.  _ Restraint be damned. _

* * *

**12:04PM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgical Wing**

Varrick is literally pirouetting around OR 220 as his colleagues gather in the gallery above. An obnoxiously loud song is playing on repeat, but his scrub nurses are unfazed, and there’s something similar to amusement in the air. He’s careful not to touch anything with his sterile gloves as he spins, barely missing a lamp, pivoting around a cart, and bumping into the nurse’s desk with his hip. 

“Woah, when did this get here?!”

Korra knits her brow, perplexed by his chaotic affect. She isn’t sure what’s a joke, what’s a serious observation, and what’s a random outburst from his inner voice. “Um, that’s always there,” she says cautiously about the desk.

The veteran attending looks back at her and grins under his mask. “You’re sharp, Dr. Korra. I like that! Let’s break this dude’s back.”

Varrick snaps his fingers and everyone in the room jumps into action. Suddenly he’s at the patient’s left, Korra’s at the right, and two twinkly-eyed med students are hovering at the foot of the operating table, waiting for a chance to help like puppies begging for scraps. 

“Alright, Doc, let’s see what you’ve got; what’s our diagnosis and indication for cracking this man’s spine?” Varrick asks. His face is mostly hidden by his bright blue scrub cap and mask, but Korra can see the unhinged glint in his eyes. She has been regarded as an unorthodox surgeon, but Varrick is many times worse in that department. He’s just shy of being dangerously jocose, always inches from causing irreparable harm.

_ Holy shit,  _ Korra thinks before actually replying. “This is a 37 year old man, adolescent idiopathic scoliosis has progressed to adult type, secondary to failed nonoperative interventions. The patient experiences severe spinal imbalance and chronic pain associated with the curvature of the spine, and he needs an osteotomy and fusion of T9 through L9.”

A pregnant pause follows her summary, leaving everyone within earshot anxiously waiting. Is she right, or is this a repeat of her surgery with Kuvira? 

After four seconds too many, Varrick snorts out a zany laugh. “Sharp!” he exclaims, much to Korra’s relief. “Zhu Li, where’s the utensil cart?”

“She transferred off your service three years ago, Dr. Varrick,” one of the nurses replies. It’s obvious in her inflection that she reminds him regularly.

“Three years ago? Am I _ that  _ unbearable?” he asks over his shoulder.

“No, sir, you requested a transfer because she didn’t know the words to Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty.”

“I did?! That was dumb, I don’t even like that song,” he says with a shrug. Finally, Varrick returns his focus to Korra, who is overexerting herself trying not to laugh. “Have you ever worked with Zhu Li? She’s the best, a real killer.”

Korra nods quietly so she can keep her lips tightly shut, barely managing to dam her laughter. 

“Well, I guess we’ll have to make do with—” Varrick looks around until he spots the scrub nurse. “Hey, absurdly strong guy, what’s your name?”

“It’s Mok, sir.”

“We’ll have to make do with Mok. Let’s begin!” 

He wriggles his head in the nurse’s direction, signaling Korra to ask for a utensil. It takes a moment for her to register what he’s doing, the first cut is typically reserved for the lead surgeon.

“Nurse Mok, 10 blade please.” Korra holds out her hand and a cold metal handle taps against her palm, causing her fingers to reflexively curl around it. 10 blades are surprisingly weighty, smooth, and versatile. Just holding it in her hand makes her skin prickle, she missed the rush of the cut.

She twirls the scalpel between her fingers to present the handle to Varrick, but he backs away as if he’s being handed a grenade. “Get that thing away from me! This is your show, no one up there is here to see me,” he insists, gesturing to the crowd in the gallery.

For the first time since scrubbing in, Korra looks up and realizes that the gallery is full. Every seat is taken, and there’s even people standing against the back wall of the small overlook. A more timid resident would have emptied their bladder on the spot, but Korra is a fan of the attention, it is her comfort zone. 

Without hesitation, she fixes her grip on the blade and makes the first cut. There’s audible murmuring from the audience as Varrick folds his arms and watches as if he’s just as surprised as everyone else. Less than 30 minutes into the operation, he finds a swiveling stool to spin on while Korra narrates her work. 

She mines her way through skin, and muscle, and fascia, until she’s exposed the gray-white bone underneath. By the time Korra’s dissecting vertebrae from their grated discs, the shock has worn off, it’s clear that she is more than capable, and the viewers relax into their seats to enjoy the show.

Tenzin glances to his side and notices the way that Tarrlok’s brow rises with pointed interest. He smirks at the Chairman, who’s unaware that he’s being watched, and leans in so his lips are just a breath away from Tarrlok’s ear. “I told you so.”

Ice blue eyes narrow into slits aimed at Tenzin’s cocky face. “I don’t recall arguing against _ or  _ in favor of Dr. Korra. Don’t be so childish.”

Tenzin bites back an inappropriate chuckle as a lock of hair falls over the brown skin of Tarrlok’s forehead, ruining the pristine appearance of his hair. “I digress.”

They return to watching and take turns pointing out how Korra navigates one difficult skill after the next. Tenzin spots the clever angle she uses for debridement, and Tarrlok admits that her choice of blade is exceptional. They won’t say it, but they always wind up agreeing about things like this. Good medicine is good medicine, undeniable, and true. And despite the way they bicker in meetings, and openly disagree about almost everything, they share a deeper understanding of each other, an almost intimate consideration.

Almost everyone in the gallery watches with bated breath as Korra delicately places several bone grafts. Tenzin, however, is trying not to perceive the thin gap between his thigh and Tarrlok’s. Their eyes keep meeting through the reflection in the glass, and they don’t bother to look away. To anyone else, their staring is innocuous, disguised as simple observation. To anyone else, there doesn’t appear to be any secret proclivities. They’re just two respected hospital employees if you ask _ anyone  _ else.

There’s a lull in the surgery, but Tenzin doesn’t notice. He’s too fixated on how his knuckles are lightly brushing against Tarrlok’s well-pressed suit pants. Even this small amount of contact is tantalizing, but if he adjusts slightly, perhaps he can— 

The gallery door swings open with a loud metal clink and stirs the audience from their deep trance, ripping away the veil of distraction hiding Tenzin’s contemplations. Kuvira walks in from the hall, and he jerks his hand away from Chairman Tarrlok. Tenzin loudly clears his throat as a reddish hue diffuses across his face.

Kuvira ignores his squirming and makes her way to the back of the room. A few students move to give up their seats but she waves them off, preferring to stand. There’s less than an hour left for the operation so she settles in — back leaning against the wall, arms folded across her chest, face expressionless and attentive. Some invisible force draws Korra’s eye up into the room and she freezes for a split second. Her weight is being supported by the operating table and that’s the only thing that keeps her upright.

Dozens of eyes have been watching her, critiquing and applauding silently, but Kuvira’s aloof green gaze tilts her reality. The room spins around her while she tries to steady her mind. _ You got this, you got this, you got this. _

Mok hands Korra the first of 4 rods she needs to place in the delicate bone of the spine. A millimeter in the wrong direction would cause massive paralysis, so she must be precise. There are no do-overs when traversing the intricate network of nerves that branch from the spine like vines. 

The surgical drill makes a haunting whirring noise, something you might hear in a horror film, and as Korra drives it through the bone there’s a nauseating crack. A trepid hush falls over the gallery as she works. One-by-one, she places the rods, her every movement perfectly calculated, almost robotic. If Kuvira’s technique is that of a ballerina, Korra is a mechanical technician. 

Just over an hour passes before she finishes. A sharp prick of the patient’s foot and a twitch of their toes offers an early sign that the surgery was a success. Varrick checks a few other lower extremity reflexes before looking up to the gallery so say, “I don’t know about you all, but that was awesome.”

Laughter breaks out mixed with a modest applause, and folks begin to shuffle out the door to return to the work day. Tenzin and Tarrlok head toward the exit to go congratulate Korra, but they run into Kuvira before they make it.

“Dr. Beifong, you look beautiful as ever,” Tarrlok says with a perfectly deft smile. 

Kuvira smiles back, though her face resembles more of a grimace. “You as well, Chairman.” 

Tarrlok accepts the compliment with a slick grin, ignoring the sarcastic delivery. He places a hand on Tenzin’s shoulder, making the Chief of Hematology flinch. “Dr. Tenzin and I were just headed down to compliment Dr. Korra. She was quite impressive.”

Tenzin nods proudly, and Kuvira resists the urge to roll her eyes in front of the department chair despite agreeing with him. She’s seen her fair share of neuro surgeries, but she’s never seen a resident display such technical prowess with so little assistance from their attending. She reluctantly accepts that Korra is not the reckless amateur she judged her to be. Maybe...Baatar was right.

“I would have to agree,” Kuvira says. She clasps her hands behind her back and turns to look down into the OR. “I’m curious as to what a little discipline could do for her.”

Tarrlok’s eyes go wide, all agog to pick at the disaffection hiding underneath Kuvira’s words. He can feel the heat coming off of Tenzin’s neck and gently squeezes his shoulder to calm him. “You think young Dr. Korra isn’t disciplined?”

Kuvira turns back to the two men without so much as a change in her tone or shift in her facial features. “I don’t think, I know.”

There is nothing that pleases the Chairman more than friendly competition, and Kuvira is serving it to him in heaps. “Well, I’d love to hear more on that.”

“You what?” Tenzin gasps, offended by the mere prospect of his longtime colleague, and supposed friend, entertaining criticism about his mentee.

“Relax, Dr. Tenzin. It’s never a bad thing to have an astute surgeon supply constructive feedback. It’s how we cultivate a winning culture here at Rush.” Tarrlok slides his hand from Tenzin’s shoulder to the middle of his back. There’s the slightest amount of pressure as he begins walking out the gallery, directing Tenzin to do the same. “Dr. Beifong, I’d like to speak with you after your cases today. Are you free at 5:30?”

“For you? Of course I can be free,” she says sarcastically. Again, Tarrlok ignores her inflection and shuffles himself and Tenzin out the way.

“Splendid. I look forward to our meeting,” he says as the gallery door closes behind them.

Tenzin mumbles childish complaints the duration of their short walk. “Can’t believe you’re meeting with Kuvira to hear her condescending remarks about Korra.”

They land at the bottom of the stairwell where the commotion has ceased, and they’re finally alone. Tarrlok locks the door in front of them and checks the stairs for anyone walking closely behind. He backs Tenzin against a wall and places that same hand that tempered his anger, and rubbed his shoulder, and pressed firmly into the breadth of his back, just under his jaw. “Will you hush? The Beifongs only get under your skin because you allow it.”

All the space between them disappears and Tenzin gets nervous that someone will see. He’s always the nervous one, worried that their next tryst will be their last. His fear is equally concerned with losing Tarrlok as it is with losing the life he’s built for appearances. “I don’t think we should be—”

He’s cut off by a kiss, soft and reassuring. Tarrlok leans into him, letting his weight settle against Tenzin’s chest. “You’re always so concerned with _ should,  _ Chief Tenzin. You’d do well to focus on _ will.” _

The distant sound of someone entering the stairwell a few floors up pushes them apart. Before Tenzin can fully process what happened, Tarrlok is out in the hall making his way to OR 220. He’ll have to make sense of all of it later.

He catches up with Tarrlok and follows him through the swinging doors of OR 220. “Korra,” he says, standing just behind the Chairman. “This is Dr. Tarrlok, the board representative for your department.”

Korra snaps off her PPE and quickly sanitizes her hands. She reaches for a handshake and gets pulled into a vice grip. “The young protege. It was a pleasure to see your work up close.”

“Thank you,” she says through gritted teeth, barely surviving their handshake. “I’ve learned from the best here at Rush.”

“No doubt about that.” Tarrlok finally let’s go of her hand and flashes that perfectly professional smile as she rubs away the pain. “I’d like to discuss a very big opportunity with you if you’re free this evening.”

A giddy smile lights up Korra’s face. “Abso-fucking-lutely,” she exclaims, catching a scornful look of disapproval from Tenzin. 

Tarrlok doesn’t even take note, all he hears is her agreement. “Splendid. Come by my office around 5:30.”

“Yes sir, Chairman Tarrlok. I’ll be there at 5:30 sharp.” This time Korra grabs his hand and shakes it vigorously, to which Tarrlok responds with a cheeky grin. He’s already pleased with how his plan is unfolding.

* * *

**3:49PM // Rush University Medical Center // Surgical Floor**

Korra doesn’t notice, but she’s practically running through the halls. The amount of adrenaline coursing through her veins feels like pure electricity. She desperately needs an outlet or else she’ll explode.

As she makes her way to the on-call rooms, nurses and aids say hello and call for her attention to no avail. She’s on a surgery high like no other. 

“Hold my pages,” she yells at the scrub nurse as she flies by in a blur.

A few doors down from her favorite room, she bursts into the nurses lounge and finds the person she’s looking for. Mako looks up from his Hot Pocket gleefully, thinking his friend came to brag about her latest win. To his surprise, she charged over, grabbed him by the elbow, and dragged him out the room. 

“I need your help with something,” she insists wildly.

“But my Hot Pocket,” Mako complains as he’s pulled through the hall and into the on-call room. 

“I’ll buy you another one,” she snaps as she locks the door. “Strip!” 

Korra starts shedding her clothes before Mako can protest, and she doesn’t take kindly to his hesitation. “Earth to Mako. I have a lady boner that could cut stone. Get naked or get out so I can do this myself.”

After Korra’s shirt flies over her head, revealing her taut figure underneath, he finds the motivation to do the same. Mako barely makes it out of his scrubs before Korra pushes him onto the tiny bed. “Condom,” she breathes between frantic kisses, making her way up and down his neck while she straddles his lap.

Mako wraps one arm around her waist for balance and leans over to dig through his pockets. When he returns upright, he almost loses track of what he's doing with two bare breasts directly in his face, bobbing as Korra pants. She settles into his lap low enough for her sex to brush against his stiffening length. Mako hisses at the slick warmth. 

“Put it on,” Korra demands, feverishly carding her hands through his hair. A sharp tug snaps him back into action and he finally does as he’s told. Korra takes him into her hand and shifts up on her knees, guiding him inside with very little patience. “Mmmmfuck,” she moans as she slides down onto him, first taking the tip, then letting every inch stretch her open.

Mako’s arms circle back around the small of Korra’s back, pulling her close, allowing him to sink deeper still. “Shit, Mako, you have no fucking idea.”

“You could tell me,” he husks, biting at her nipple and playfully twirling his tongue around it. 

“I feel like— mmmmmright there,” she moans, grinding harder against his pumps. “I feel incredible. I’m the best resident this hospital has seen in years.”

“In decades,” Mako corrects with a deep thrust, drawing out a shaky whimper. 

“Fuck yes! I earned this spot,” Korra continues, words getting tremulous and high pitched. 

“You’re fucking brilliant.” Mako’s mouth roams across the skin of her chest, leaving a trail of bruises that he soothes with a languid tongue. Korra rocks into him with less and less restraint, finding a beautiful pressure against her clit as she presses her hips down. Her grip in his hair is painfully tight, but he doesn’t waver, holding her tightly as the ecstasy rushes in.

“I deserve to have everyone kissing my ass. I’m fucking amazing.”

“You’re amazing,” Mako moans into her neck, triggering an uncontrollable clenching that makes his cock twitch inside her.

“Fuck I’m close,” Korra whines, throwing her head back wantonly. Mako lifts her up and flips them over, fucking into her steadily, legs wrapped around his back, nails digging into the nape of his neck. He carefully avoids coming too fast, savoring the way he splashes into her.

But, Korra is here for a good time, not a long time, and needs him to pick up the pace. She sucks her own index until it’s dripping wet, and rubs it against Mako’s hole. 

“K— Korra,” he warns, pumping faster as she toys with him. “W— wait.”

The desperation in his voice makes her core tighten violently. She slips her finger inside of him, and loses her senses as Mako comes, bearing down into her, shaking against his orgasm. They writhe against each other while they peak together, sweating and breathing heavily. 

After a few moments of recovery, Mako rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Korra rakes her hair out of her face and sits up on the edge of the bed. “Thanks for that,” she says casually. 

“No, _ thank you,”  _ Mako pants. He props himself up on his elbows and watches as Korra gets dressed. “Maybe try warning me next time?”

Korra laughs as she steps into her scrub bottoms. “Sorry, man. I have a meeting to get to and you were getting a little too saucy.”

“Too saucy? What does that even mean?” Mako scoots to the edge of the bed with a knit brow, genuinely concerned about his performance. 

Korra sucks her teeth at his pouty face. “Don’t worry stud,” she kisses his cheek and glances down between his legs. “It’s still a very _ very  _ good ride.”

Suddenly, Mako’s very aware that he’s ass naked and being ogled. He crosses his legs with a sheepish laugh. “Right, well...uhhhh good luck at the meeting with…”

“Chairman Tarrlok,” Korra says as she makes herself presentable in the mirror. “He asked to speak with me after the neuro surgery this afternoon.”

Finally, he gets up and gets dressed too. “A meeting with the Chairman, that’s a big deal, Korra.”

“You’re telling me. I have no idea what this is about but I can’t help but feel vindicated. Little Beifong can suck my dick.” 

Mako laughs at her crass language. He met Korra when she began her residency at Rush, and after a few months of chaotic dating and frequent arguing, they decided to just be friends (with occasional benefits). He’s almost positive that she’s always been this vulgar, even in childhood. 

“That woman lives in your head rent free,” he claims.

“Bite me,” Korra replies dismissively. “I saw her watching my surgery today. I hope she enjoyed having my metaphoric balls in her mouth.”

“That’s a horrible mental image.”

“Mako please, you would willingly suck my balls if I had any.” 

Now that he’s fully dressed, Mako joins Korra in the mirror, tucking his shirt into his pants and finger combing his hair. “You’re probably right,” he admits. “But really, you’ve gotta get back to being yourself, Korra. This work will beat you down if you’re not in it for the right reasons, in it for the sake of the patients. You’re a great surgeon, get back to believing in that.”

Korra turns and hugs her friend, exhaling into the security of his embrace. The recent weeks have been stressful, but it’s comforting to know that she has people in her corner. “Thanks, Mako,” she murmurs against his shoulder.

“Don’t get soft on me now,” he teases. Korra’s hair tickles his nose as he hugs her back, and he can’t help but smile. “Also….you’re welcome.”

* * *

**5:26PM // Rush University Medical Center // Administrative Offices**

Tarrlok’s office is dimly lit by a single lamp near his bookshelf. His desk is meticulously organized with contracts and proposals stacked in neat piles. He’s reading through the latest document to make it to his desk, underlining mistakes as he goes, when his work is interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he answers before his assistant appears. 

“Kuvira Beifong is here to see you.”

He stands excitedly and rounds the desk. “Wonderful, show her in.”

Kuvira replaces the assistant in the doorway, dressed in a well tailored suit, seemingly unphased by the magnitude of the meeting. She slowly looks around the room, inventorying his volumes of classical surgery guides, heavy wooden furniture, and ornate paintings. Compared to the steel beams, glass panels, and sterile paint colors throughout the hospital, his office looks like a decadent art museum. It’s almost offensive to her eyes.

“Please, have a seat,” he suggests, pulling out a chair from the table near his door. There’s a cart with a French press and coffee grounds. He gestures to it, “espresso?”

“No, thank you,” Kuvira replies, crossing her legs in her chair. Tarrlok busies himself making his own cup and begins their discussion.

“I wanted you to meet with me to discuss the trip to Johns Hopkins for the AMA conference next month.” He sits across from her and takes a sip from his small porcelain cup. Kuvira recognizes his haughty posture, it’s similar to her own when she unapologetically tore into Tenzin in the attendings lounge a few weeks before. 

“I’m looking forward to being the first surgeon to represent Rush at the conference.” She’s chosen her words carefully, secretly probing for his real intention, and her approach works. 

“About that—“ 

The door creaks open again and interrupts him. “Sorry, Dr. Tarrlok. Dr. Korra is here as well.”

Kuvira’s jaw drops before she can hide her alarm. What is Korra doing in her meeting with the chairman? There's an equal appall in Korra’s face when she takes in the room. 

“Dr. Tarrlok _ and  _ Dr. Beifong...what a _...interesting  _ surprise,” she manages to say instead of screaming _ what the fuck. _

Tarrlok does a better job than both women hiding his emotions — he’s ecstatic to see them flustered. 

“My apologies for springing this on the two of you, and on such short notice nonetheless.”

He pulls out a chair for Korra and returns to his seat. Another sip of his espresso causes unnecessary anticipation, and that’s why he takes his time. “As you both may know, Rush has traditionally sent direct care physicians to the AMA conference — pediatricians, internalists, hematologists. But this year, I accomplished a great feat in convincing the board to enlist a surgeon.”

His monologue is barely underway before Kuvira’s patience evaporates. “Respectfully, Chairman, why are we all here?”

He smirks, his joy growing exponentially. “This year we chose you and Dr. Hei from gastroenterology to travel to Baltimore, but his wife has fallen terribly ill. These are unfortunate circumstances, and it leaves his spot vacant. So,” he exclaims, clasping his hands together with delight. “I’ve convinced the board to double down on this year’s new trend. You and Dr. Korra will be going to the conference _ together.” _

Korra’s face beams with excitement, Kuvira’s twists into torrid disbelief, and they ask in unison, _ “WHAT?!” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next weekend will likely be a bit too busy for me to update, so check back next Tuesday 😊We're about to force these bitches to spend time!!!!
> 
> Also, this chapter had a bunch of sub-plot, and I make no apologies for that. All my crackships with sail!!!


	4. sedation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The AMA conference is here, but things start off on a rocky note.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite having last week's anticipated distraction removed from my calendar, this chapter was still late because I'm a brat. And of course, said distraction was re-scheduled for this weekend, so expect another late update. Apologies 😬

_Cutthroat — that’s the best way I can describe surgery. From the second we make it to med school, aspiring surgeons are seen as sharks, gunners, the most ruthless in the class. We’re seen that way because_ we are _that way. This isn’t peds or primary care, surgery isn’t for the sticker lovers, or baby swaddlers, or masters of rapport. Either you’re willing to cut a person open and make sense of their blood and bone, or you’re in the wrong field._

_This specialty demands excellence, which means steep competition. Women have it especially hard, constantly fighting stereotypes while vying for recognition. Korra and I, time and time again, were labeled as the chicks with pretty faces and not much else to offer. We got really good at making the guys eat their words. I scored in the 90th percentile on all my board exams, Korra finished med school with AOA honors, and the administration strutted us through every gala and open house like two show ponies. We were the Pride of Pritzker._

_None of our success came easy though. For me, undergrad was hell. I had a hard time adjusting to city life and being so far from home. I was used to not having my mom around, she passed when I was in first grade, but I had never been so far from my dad. My first few years at U Chicago were clouded by anxiety and uncertainty. I almost transferred half a dozen times._

_Korra, on the other hand, never spent much time at home during high school, and it seemed like college was so easy for her. Random room assignments fated us to be dorm mates even though she was an incoming freshman and I was a junior. I can’t thank the universe enough for that bit of luck. She made school a lot less awful, Chicago started to feel like a home away from home. We studied together, shopped together, and cried together on occasion. She’s the PB to my J, the salt to my vinegar, the Tots to my Tits._

_Those two years were the best. We did a lot of dumb stuff, including hooking up an irresponsible number of times in a lot of wildly public places. But that’s what college is for. After that, I got into the Pritzker School of Medicine two years before Korra, and I thought it would be smooth sailing once we were both on our way to being doctors, but med school tested her in ways that college had not. She struggled so much during M1 and M2 that I’m still not sure how she made it out unscathed...and maybe she didn’t._

_I realized it was my turn to make things less awful for her. I spent my non-clinic weekends cleaning her apartment, cooking between study sessions, and forcing her into the shower. She was stagnant, like room temperature water, still enough to collect dust but not quite solid. Something about the program engulfed her, swallowed her whole._

_Academia is hard, but med school is not just about academics. It’s an unpleasant combination of training, hazing, and indoctrination. The nights are long, the stakes are high, and the expectations are unrealistic. Dozens of students struggled the way Korra did, and most of them dropped out under the pressure. I wouldn’t let the same thing happen to my best friend, not when she had saved me from a similar fate._

_Unfortunately, Korra got worse before she got better. There were things I couldn’t keep her from — the excessive drinking, late nights with strangers, endless bad decisions. I was starting residency and she was getting ready for her first board exam when things started to spiral out of control. It was like a slow motion plane crash._

_I got a text during one of my first on-call nights, it might have been 2 or 3 in the morning, and the hospital was eerily quiet. When I called, Korra was drunk on the other end, distraught, crying, a total mess. I could’ve gotten kicked out of the program for leaving that night, but I’m glad I ran the risk. She was barely herself when I found her sitting on the curb outside of Tenzin’s place, halfway through a bottle of vodka._

I shouldn’t have done that but he’s a fucking liar, he’s a filthy fucking liar — _that’s all she kept saying, and she was just as incoherent the morning after, overcome by a nasty hangover and mounting regret. I didn’t push her to explain, I just stayed with her because that’s what friends do. She stopped drinking for a long time after that, cut back on trips to Tenzin’s house, even went to see a therapist. Whatever happened that night changed her._

_Korra propelled herself to an elite level once she crawled out that hole. Is she emotionally repressed and guarded? Absolutely! But dark times will do that — stiffen the heart and steel one’s resolve. We have to take the good with the bad, I guess. I’m just glad she found a way to survive. That’s what we’re all working on, survival in an unforgiving world._

_It’s an honor to be a surgeon and regarded as the best of the best, but this work is a thief of happiness. Ask Beifong, or Varrick, or any other attending in the building, and they’ll say with a straight face, “it doesn’t get easier the longer you do this;_ you _get stronger.”_

_You get stronger. That’s the best any of us can do._

* * *

**7:14PM // Little Italy // Korra’s apartment**

“Thai or Chinese,” Korra yells from her kitchen while Asami kicks off her shoes at the door. 

“How do you know I’m not a burglar?” she yells back, alluding to the unlocked door she walked right through.

Korra steps into the hall with Naga in tow. “If you were a burglar, Naga would’ve mauled you.”

The all white cat pads down the hall and walks between Asami’s legs, making sure to shed as much fur as possible against her scrubs. “Hi girl,” Asami coos as she scritches between her ears.

She gathers the feline up into her arms and joins Korra in the kitchen. Naga purrs loud enough to catch her owner’s attention, and Korra just rolls her eyes. “You’re such a whore for affection.”

“Just like her mom,” Asami adds. A dish towel whips past her head right after. “I’m kidding,” she giggles as she sits the cat down. “I had Thai for lunch, let’s get Chinese.”

“Perfect. You call,” Korra instructs, pointing at her friend’s cell phone on the countertop. 

“It’s your apartment, you call!”

“I— I can’t. The Chinese food place blocked my number,” Korra explains, her voice just a whisper of shame. 

Asami sucks in her lips to stall a laugh. “Now, how exactly do you get blocked by the take-out place?”

Korra rubs the back of her neck, thinking of the best way to admit to her sins. “I might have drunkenly ordered 30 things of shrimp fried rice and passed out before the delivery guy came. Mako said they posted my Facebook profile picture behind the counter like a wanted poster.”

At this point, laughter is required. Asami bursts into a thunderous guffaw and grabs at her stomach as her abs get sore. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, well it happens to sexy people, Asami. If it hasn’t happened to you…” her words trail off in vain accusation.

“Sexiness? Really? I hope that helps you sleep at night.” Asami shakes her head and goes about placing their order. Like all good take-out, they get their food about an hour later and settle in front of the TV to continue their Game of Thrones rewatch. 

The apartment is painfully under-decorated despite being spacious and beautifully designed. There were a few months between medical school and residency when Korra had to move out of the place she was renting with friends, and make do with her parent’s couch. The old springs caused what she can only imagine was permanent damage to her spine, so she didn’t spend much time house hunting. Her first six paychecks from residency went toward her down payment after she picked a brand new condo a few blocks from the hospital. 

Her first night home alone, she put on calf high socks and slid across the hardwood floors like she was in Risky Business. It was nice just being independent for the first time in her life. Once she really got settled, she was already drowning in actual work, her patient list was a literal headache that never ended. The decorating she had dreamed of all her life, dating back to the years when she would tack boy band posters and glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom walls, became a non-priority. Since then, she’s grown accustomed to the egg shell white walls, and temporary blinds, and mismatched furniture. 

The two women crowd the center of the slouching couch and huddle over the coffee table as they eat. Korra is an avid Jonmund shipper and Asami prefers Jongritte. Depending on the amount of wine they consume while they watch, the debates can get intense. 

“But who does he sail off into the sunset with?” Korra yells through a mouthful of rice.

“Sunset? It’s the fucking unknown out there,” Asami retorts, furiously pointing at the screen as Jon Snow traverses the white snowscape beyond The Wall. “Jon and Ygritte have undeniable chemistry. They’re having sex. In. Real. Life!”

“I could not care less, Tits. Really, truly, could not.” Korra shrugs just before Asami pokes her with a chopstick. 

A devilish grin inches across Asami’s face, then she aims a little below the belt. “You don’t care about real life? Well then, let’s unpack why you love Cersei so much.”

Korra’s eyes light up with newfound shame, first her confession of being call-blocked, now this. “How about we don’t.” She grabs a few empty containers and conveniently runs off to the kitchen. 

Asami simply talks louder to continue her teasing. “Cersei, Regina Mills, Ms. Honey from Matilda...let’s talk about it, Tots.”

“No,” Korra protests, doing her best to make too much noise in the other room. She knows exactly what drives her choices in fictional characters, but saying it out loud feels sinful. 

“Kuvira Beifong, for example, fits right into that group, doesn’t she?” A crashing noise rings out from the kitchen, pots and pans clanging against the tiled floor. “Are you okay?!”

Asami gets up to check on her friend and finds Korra standing beside the dishwasher, one hand on a cabinet door, the other unsuccessfully supporting a lopsided shelf. “I hate you,” she hisses.

“They hated Jesus for telling the truth too.” Asami helps pick up the mess and fix the shelf, and the two of them return to the couch, this time with wine in hand. A few glasses in and an episode later, Korra’s head begins to feel too heavy for her shoulders.

She leans over and rests against Asami, curling her feet under the throw pillows for added comfort. “She’s hot right?”

Melisandre appears on screen and Asami knits her brow. “Sure, I guess, but I’m more of a Daenerys kind of girl.” She tilts her head to the side to get a better look.

“No, not the Red Witch,” Korra says, looking up to get Asami’s full attention. “Beifong. The little one.”

“Ohhhhhhh, right. Objectively speaking? She’s fucking hot, but professionally speaking, she’s a lawsuit waiting to happen...and...sort of my sister-in-law.”

Korra frowns and turns back to the TV. She isn’t even sure what makes her think she could be with Kuvira. Having relations with a senior physician in the hospital before she’s even fully licensed is a dumb risk, and something she shouldn’t be worried about. There’s been no sign that Kuvira thinks anything of Korra besides her usual indignation and indifference. 

The last of the wine swirls around the bottom of Korra’s stemless glass and she wonders when she’ll start feeling satisfied with her life. She’s beaten all the odds, and shocked all her naysayers, and overcome all of her tribulations. When does life begin? When does it start feeling...satisfying?

“You’re babysitting that drink, Tots.”

“Huh,” Korra looks up again and realizes Asami is genuinely concerned. Her thoughts have transposed themselves across her face as a pensive and dim expression. “Oh yeah, I’m a lightweight these days.” She sits up and places the drink on the table. 

“You’re thinking about the flight tomorrow.”

“How’d you know?” Korra asks, rubbing her arm awkwardly. 

“It’s my job as your best friend. It’s also my job to tell you that it’s going to be fine. You’re an exceptional doctor, and Beifong respects talent. Just be yourself, I promise she won’t kill you.” Asami nudges Korra with her shoulder, earning a sheepish grin.

“I know. I was actually saying that exact thing to Mako the other day. I just...I have to get out of my head.” After a moment of contemplation, Korra grabs her glass, refills it, and holds it up. “No more second-guessing myself. The AMA conference can suck my dick.”

Asami laughs and clinks her drink against Korra’s. “You’re damn right.”

* * *

**12:02PM // Chicago, Illinois // O’Hare Airport**

Kuvira’s alarm went off at 5:00AM, like it does every morning, but she was in the shower already, like she is every morning. She finished enjoying the steamy cleanse while music softly filled the room. She brushed her teeth, dried her hair, and went through her skin care routine. She skipped her morning run because she wasn’t going to work, opting for a second mug of coffee instead. She watered her plants, turning them a few ticks so the paler leaves could bask in the sun. She set her thermostat on a timer, keyed in the security code, and casually wheeled her luggage down to the foyer of her building.

Lin arrived around 10:30 and helped her with her things. They rode in silence most of the way to the airport, enjoying the hum of the road. Kuvira mentioned how conniving she thought Tarrlok’s maneuver was. Lin encouraged her to let it go, he is the Chairman after all. They stopped at Lin’s favorite bakery and got scones, and as they rounded into the departures zone, Lin handed Kuvira a stick of gum. “Be safe,” she said, hugging her close, tight, and protective.

Checking a bag was a bit chaotic with only one airline representative at the counter, but TSA moved quickly enough. By noon, Kuvira is already sitting at the terminal for the 2:00PM flight to Baltimore. As she opens her book to get a head start on reading, she realizes something’s missing. 

“Where the hell is she?” she mumbles under her breath as she scans through the crowds. 

Time starts to move fast, and the once empty terminal becomes crowded with families, and singles, and flight personnel. Empty seats fill up and it becomes almost uncomfortably noisy. A ding over the intercom, followed by a staticky but chipper voice, cuts through the roar. “Welcome to Flight 287, non-stop to Baltimore, Maryland. We will begin the boarding process momentarily. If you’re flying standby…”

The announcement blends into the atmosphere as Kuvira starts to feel anxious, which is odd. What does she care if Korra misses the flight? Her leg bounces nervously as she checks her watch, again, and again. She finds herself reaching for her phone, thinking of who to call to check on the young doctor, thinking maybe she was stuck somewhere, or had an emergency case to attend to. 

Kuvira thumbs through her contacts for someone who might have Korra’s number, realizing that she hasn’t bothered to save Tenzin’s. She settles on calling Lin when she hears sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor a short distance away. Korra is jogging towards her when she looks up to pinpoint the noise. 

She shoots Korra an exaggerated eye roll, the same one she tempered throughout their meeting with Tarrlok. If she could, she would drag him down to O’Hare and have him justify his choices right at the gate. There’s no way he could pretend that the two of them were equals in the slightest. 

“Sorry,” Korra pants, coming to a stop just beside Kuvira. “My alarm didn’t go off this morning, and the first Uber canceled, then the prices surged, and I was not going to pay sixty bucks for twenty five minutes, and—”

“We’re boarding now,” Kuvira cuts in, standing to gather her carry-on items. She slings her bag over her shoulder and turns to join the line of other passengers. 

“Good to see you too,” Korra mumbles under her breath. She follows behind as they scan their boarding passes and file down the jet bridge.

Just as they enter the aisle, they squeeze past a man obnoxiously adjusting his bag in the overhead bin, then they find their seats. Kuvira slides into the row first but she doesn’t sit down. She takes out a pack of disinfectant wipes and cleans every visible service. Korra slides in next and tries her best to stay out the way, occasionally looking over as the cleaning escalates further. 

“Anal much?” she comments flippantly.

Kuvira glares at her briefly before sanitizing the seat belt again. “Planes are filthy. You should know that, _doctor_ Korra.” Her intention is to sound pretentious, but her tone falters, giving way to a more patronizing sound. She’s somewhat concerned that Korra doesn’t take similar precautions as a healthcare worker.

On the other hand, Korra thinks it’s all a bit much. “I _do_ know that, Dr. Beifong.” She shoves her bag under the seat and pulls out her headphones. “I also know that I popped three Emergen-C’s this morning, I got my flu shot, and I’m healthy as a horse. Chances of me getting sick are super low.”

“I don’t like leaving things up to chance,” Kuvira replies plainly, no malice or ill-intent in her voice. Her own words are reminiscent of Baatar’s the day he stopped by her office. His concern was genuine but the sentiment has been cutting into Kuvira’s sense of self for weeks. _Restrained —_ a single word living in her most superficial consciousness, burning through the walls she’s carefully constructed. 

Korra doesn’t notice how Kuvira wanders off into deep thought, and she turns on her favorite podcast in lieu of responding. They get comfortable in their business class seats and let the cool recycled air wash away the tension. 

A loud chime sounds throughout the cabin as the seatbelt sign turns off. Korra’s been fighting sleep through the first thirty minutes of her podcast and startles back to reality. Kuvira glances over from her book, reflexively checking to make sure everything is okay. “We’re at cruising altitude,” she clarifies.

“Oh.” Korra makes sense of what’s happening and decides to pause her listening while the flight attendants are passing beverages. “I almost dozed off.”

“I noticed,” Kuvira says. She tries to pick up her reading where she left off, but Korra takes the small exchange as an opportunity to chat.

“What’s the book?”

Kuvira decides not to be irked and flashes the turquoise cover featuring a rusty old helmet. _“The Song of Achilles_ by Madeline Miller.” She wonders if more explanation is needed, not everyone is interested in the retelling of Greek mythology.

No further explanation is warranted as Korra’s eyes light up, impressed and delighted. _“When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him..._ I love that book.”

It’s Kuvira’s turn to be impressed, she quietly closes the book altogether. “You like Greek mythology?”

An indiscreet blush warms Korra’s face. “Would you believe that I spent a few shitty years in med school rereading _The Odyssey_ like a bedtime tale?”

Would she believe it? Kuvira had lived through her own painful schooling experiences, relying on fiction and a few consistent people in her life to manage the chronic melancholy. “As a matter of fact, I _would.”_

With very little effort, they fall into a back-and-forth about books. Classics and contemporary pieces, fiction and autobiographies, a few children’s stories, and a handful of middle school obsessions. Common ground forms between them where there used to be the bitter chill of rivalry. A steady hum of quiet laughter and intrigued gasps takes over their row, and they talk with their hands as much as their mouths. 

Then there’s one title that eludes them, right there on the tip of each woman’s tongue. Kuvira is too unwilling to save her point for later and buys an hour of in-flight WiFi to do some investigating. Korra watches from the edge of her seat, literally leaning into the attending’s space while she scrolls through a number of useless Google pages. “I can’t believe I can’t think of this book, I’ve read it a million times.”

“Try Googling _young girl brother harmonica genius,”_ Korra suggests. Kuvira isn’t convinced that’ll work, but gives it a shot, and clicks on the first link she finds. 

_“Yolanda’s Genius!”_ she exclaims. A few nearby passengers turn their heads and she realizes how loud she’s gotten. Louder than she typically allows herself to be. “Have you read this?” she asks.

“I’m pretty sure...for a book report maybe. Remind what it’s about.”

“Siblings,” Kuvira starts, her thoughts crowding to the front of her throat, sticking there for a moment too long. The plot comes together in her mind and she feels a tug in her stomach that’s nearly painful. “Uhhh...a brother and a sister in Chicago. Yolanda is very protective of her little brother Andrew, who doesn’t talk much, but he’s a brilliant musician. Their mom doesn’t really _understand_ what Yolanda sees in him.”

Korra finally picks up on Kuvira’s hesitation, she quickly tries to lighten the mood. “If it’s about Chicago, then sign me up,” she says with a forced chortle. The corner of Kuvira’s mouth twitches, almost making it to a half smile, then she stomps down the sliver of emotion that’s made it to the surface. 

“I should probably get back to this,” she suggests, holding up _The Song of Achilles_ again. 

“Yeah, for sure. Enjoy.” Korra shifts back so she’s squarely in her own seat again, and hits play on her phone. Other than a few bumps of turbulence, the flight is short and smooth. 

The podcast must be exceptionally boring because Korra nods off almost instantly. Her head teeters freely until she sleepily slumps against Kuvira’s shoulder. If it were any other subordinate, on any other day, Kuvira would have shrugged her off without hesitation. But for now, she figures there’s no harm in letting the younger doctor sleep, she did have a rough morning.

* * *

**4:37PM // Baltimore, Maryland // BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport**

Unlike their boarding experience, Kuvira and Korra walk the jet bridge side-by-side. It’s easy enough to follow the signs to baggage claim, so they retrieve their luggage and make their way to arrivals to catch an Uber. 

The driver pulls to a stop an awkward distance from the curb and doesn’t bother to help load the bags. Kuvira is annoyed but Korra doesn’t mind, she just grabs the two largest bags and slings them into the trunk of the SUV. “Here, I’ll take that,” she says, pointing to Kuvira’s duffle bag.

“Oh, uh, thank you,” she stammers. There’s a noticeable ease to the way Korra moves, even when she’s doing something strenuous. Her athletic build is much more noticeable without scrubs, and white coats, and surgical gear. Kuvira catches herself staring at Korra’s back, the way her crew neck hugs against her shoulder blades, and the subtle stretch of her sleeves as she flexes her biceps.

“Coming?” Korra asks, standing by the door waiting for Kuvira to get in first.

She clears her throat, forcibly gathering her senses before scooting across the back seat. The hotel is only 20 minutes away so they don’t bother with small talk. Kuvira pulls out her phone to text Lin that she’s made it safe.

**Kuvira** : On the way to the hotel now

**_Lin_ ** _: Good. How’s the rookie?_

**Kuvira** : Only mildly upsetting

**Kuvira** : She almost missed the flight, but that’s not surprising in the least

**_Lin_ ** _: Apparently punctuality can’t be taught because Tenzin’s never late. Ever._

**Kuvira** : I wish he were late to our meetings

**Kuvira** : And by that I mean I wish we didn’t have those stupid meetings

**_Lin_ ** _: Trial’s almost done. Hang in there, kid. He’s a bit high strung but generally means well_

**Kuvira** : Did he mean well when he weaseled Korra into this trip?

**_Lin_ ** _: Well, he and Tarrlok have an interesting rapport. I don’t think it took much convincing._

**Kuvira** : What the hell does that mean?

**_Lin_ ** _: ...is typing_

Before Lin can respond, they arrive at the hotel. It’s a 20 story building made almost entirely of windows. There are balconies jutting from the rooms, finely pruned hedges framing the entrance, and a revolving door just under the towering letters that read Four Seasons Hotel.

Korra is so preoccupied with the wobbling wheel on her bag that she accidentally pushes her way into the revolving section as Kuvira. Eight circumferential feet are way too many as they clumsily shuffle between the glass panels, squeezed uncomfortably close, and forced to make intimate eye contact.

“Sorry,” Korra mutters through a cringing, apologetic smile. They practically fall out of the revolving door into the lobby. Kuvira makes a show of righting herself and walking to the concierge with some amount of dignity. Korra scrambles behind her. 

“Good afternoon. My associate and I are checking in, our reservation is under Rush University Medical Center.” Kuvira slides her license across the counter and waits for the woman to pull up their itinerary.

“Welcome to The Four Seasons, we’re happy to have you with us, Dr. Beifong and Dr. Korra. I’ll just need both of your signatures here and here.” The concierge’s smile is almost offensively wide, her name tag is crooked, and her nail polish is chipped. Kuvira takes her in with a disapproving once-over before scribbling her name down. After Korra signs, they’re handed two keys to the room. “Here are your keys to the king suite. Breakfast is included at our first floor cafe, doors open at 6. The pool is—”

“I’m sorry, did you say _king suite,_ as in one king sized bed?”

“That’s correct,” the concierge replies, still smiling, still too happy. 

“That won’t do.”

“Yeah, we _need_ two beds,” Korra adds over Kuvira’s shoulder, mortified and panicked. Kuvira shoots her look, quietly insisting that she calm down, then turns back to the other woman. 

“Well let me see,” she offers. There’s a lot of typing and scrolling before she looks up from her computer screen with a frown. “I’m sorry ladies, this is the only room I have left. We’re booked out for the conference.”

“That’s unacceptable. There has to be a reservation you can switch, or another hotel that can accommodate us,” Kuvira insists. Her left eyebrow is dangerously high and Korra recognizes that pitch of her voice from that day in the hall, she shudders from the memory alone. 

There’s a great deal of professional “arguing” between Kuvira and the concierge, which escalates to include Tarrlok and the hotel manager. The two surgeons are asked to wait while other hotels are called, but none of them have doubles available. Most hospitals send two people, so doubles are prime real estate, and apparently scarce. 

“I really am sorry,” the manager says, trembling slightly as Kuvira straightens to her full height on the other side of the counter. “We called every place in a 20 mile radius. This is our busiest time of the year, and there’s just nothing left.”

Kuvira can only be told “no” so many times before she becomes irate. Korra fears they’ll lose the reservation they _do have_ if Kuvira stops caring about professionalism, so she slides between the attending and the hotel personnel and takes back their rooms keys. “You know what, kings are pretty big, we’re pretty small, and the conference is only a few days long. We’ll make do.”

Her exaggerated kindness is enough to get them out of the lobby and up to the room. If Kuvira is upset she’s doing an excellent job of hiding it. She stands patiently, arms folded and bags at her feet, as Korra keys into the room. There’s not one word spoken between them as they enter and survey the space. 

The bed takes up most of the room. The oversized TV consumes half of the wall. There’s a desk, an armchair, and a nightstand, and not much else. _At least it smells and looks clean,_ Kuvira thinks. She disinfects the high-touch surfaces just like on the plane, and this time Korra lets her go on without protest or comment. 

“Look, this is not ideal but we’re here now, so let’s set some ground rules.” Kuvira walks to the side of the bed with the nightstand and pulls the pillows away from the center. “This is my side, that’s your side. You don’t come on my side, I don’t go on your side. Make sense?”

“I’m a doctor, not a five year old,” Korra pans.

Kuvira resists the urge to disagree — anyone 10 years younger than her might as well be a kindergartner. “Good, then we shouldn’t have any problems. If you don’t mind, I’d like to shower and get to bed. I’m an early riser.”

Korra checks the clock. Only 5:38, the sun is still up, and there’s people still arriving for check-in. “Yeah sure, knock yourself out.”

Kuvira nods, satisfied with how she’s handling this unpleasant turn of events. She’s not known for her flexibility, so this is a small personal triumph. While she unpacks, Korra sets up her laptop and presentation notes at the desk, hoping to get in some review time before it gets late. Her invitation to the conference was so last minute that she barely had time to plan anything to present. 

Most fourth year residents are focused on scoping out a fellowship, or getting in good with a group of private practice surgeons for future job prospects. It’s rare to have any postgraduate research until year five when residency is wrapping up. Luckily, Korra started out with a strong reputation, earning her a spot on a smaller research team her first year in. The majority of her time on the trial was spent doing the grunt work — removing JP drains, checking for bowel movements, repacking wounds during follow-up appointments. She hated every bit of it, being relegated to the tasks medical students usually did, but it was worth it to get published before second year even started. 

Presenting at a major medical conference, especially as a representative for the entire hospital, is a nausea-inducing challenge. Korra wants to perform to the best of her abilities, but she’s struggling to drown out the doubt in her head. 

“This was a double-blind, randomized clinical trial for Dr. Tran’s patented gastric sleeve technology,” she rehearses out loud. As she practices, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the desk. “Oof, you look unloved,” she tells herself, pressing into the dark bags under her eyes. 

Just then the bathroom door cracks open, and a puff of steam escapes before Kuvira gingerly tiptoes out wrapped in what must be the world’s smallest towel. Korra turns towards the movement in her peripheral vision and immediately chokes on air. A small voice in her head is telling her to be polite, look away, give Kuvira some privacy. A stronger, more prominent urge keeps her eyes trained on the endless stretch of leg left so beautifully exposed by The Four Season’s tiny, tiny towels.

“Apologies, I forgot...this,” Kuvira says as she snatches a small bottle of moisturizer from the bed. She backpedals to the bathroom, barely able to keep her towel from hitting the floor, afraid of what the view of her backside must be. Korra is a speechless ornament, bright eyed, mouth agape, dangling at the edge of her sensibilities. 

“As you were,” Kuvira instructs gently before disappearing into the bathroom again. 

Slowly, over what feels like hours, the saliva returns to Korra’s mouth, and her brain reboots. Less than 24 hours earlier, she imagined that she could repress her attractions and act like a functional professional for one weekend. All that evaporated in a matter of seconds. She turns back to the mirror, hoping she looks more composed than she feels, and finds herself in a state of silent panic. “What did I do to deserve this very specific torture?”

* * *

**7:09PM // Baltimore, Maryland // The Four Seasons Hotel**

Korra takes her turn in the bathroom, braving the muggy air and damp bathmats, while Kuvira adjusts to her side of the bed. The TV is on a channel neither of them picked, playing some weird infomercials at a low, negligible volume. By the time Korra emerges from the bathroom, fully clothed in faded sweats and an old t-shirt, Kuvira has devoured nearly a hundred pages of her book.

Spotting her approximate progress, Korra notes, “it goes fast once the raids start.”

Kuvira’s caught off guard, it’s as if Korra read her mind to pinpoint the exact page she was on. Again, she’s impressed, more than she’d like to be. “It does,” she agrees, closing the book and setting it on the nightstand. Korra fiddles with her phone charger in the outlet that’s partially blocked by the headboard. Once she gets it plugged in, she slinks into the bed, careful not to cross the imaginary line in between them.

“TV on or off?” Kuvira asks.

“Off.” The room is dimly lit by the lamp on Korra’s side of the bed, so she points to it to make sure Kuvira doesn’t need the light. There’s a head shake and darkness swiftly follows. 

For a long time, they both pretend to sleep, staring at the ceiling, deliriously watching the shadows shift. Eventually, they get some rest, but it’s the stiffest, most unpleasant sleep imaginable. It’s hard not to drift toward the thing that your mind wants most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOT? Yolanda's Genius? TSOA? THIS IS CALLED PROJECTING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN 🧡
> 
> Also, a huge thank you to the exceptionally sexy [@kuvorra](https://twitter.com/kuvorra) for actually getting call-blocked by a restaurant, live in 4K, while I was there to bear witness. May your sushi orders be heard again one day!!!!


	5. paralysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Korra and Kuvira attend the first day of the AMA conference, and take on their own challenges in presenting

_When people say you don’t get to choose your family, I say “fuck that.” If the people you’re born with won’t love and respect you, find some folks who will. My mother and sister never understood me, the way I handled myself, my interests, my goals. They saw me as too rigid when I just wanted to be_ good. _When everyone else wanted to bend the rules, I preferred to color inside the lines._

_I wanted to be disciplined. I wanted my mother’s approval. I wanted a relationship with my sister and...and my father. But wanting something doesn’t cut it, you have to go out and work for it, and make it happen on your own volition._

_My sister got sent away, and my mother retired to a remote village back in her homeland, so I turned to my closest friends for support — Tenzin, Kya, and Bumi — they were my_ real _family. I hate to admit it, but I would have been lost in this world without Tenzin, that softie. Sans our shit show of a break-up, there hasn’t been a day since we met that I couldn’t call on him for stuffy advice and a listening ear. He’s almost as hard up about rules as I am, and he cares about people in a selfless way, that’s why we work._

 _There’s so many stories I could tell about our antics, the hearts we broke, the problems we solved,_ and _the problems we created. We were two perfectionists trying to fill big ass shoes, overly ambitious, burdened by lineage. Bonds like that make for a real family. Chosen family._

_Years later, it didn’t surprise me one bit that Suyin called complaining about her ward, this rough kid she took in to feel good about herself. If you ask me, forcing a little girl into an unfamiliar environment, where no one likes her and there are unrealistic expectations, is just as cruel as letting her fend for herself. Kuvira wasn’t even in high school before Su was trying to kick her out. I suppose she outgrew her cute phase too fast, and at the young age of 13, she wasn’t a darling orphan girl worth showing off at fundraisers anymore._

_And me? I’m no mother, but I couldn’t stand to see Kuvira suffer the way I did as a kid, growing up in a house where she didn’t fit in. I wasn’t so sure I could raise a teenager, but I’m not one to back down from a challenge. I packed a bag, booked a flight, and went to do the craziest thing I’ve ever done. It was also the most rewarding._

_It took Kuvira and I some time, but we found out how to make our little life together a happy one. I cut back on hours at the hospital, took her to see my therapist, let her set her own pace, and deal with her shit in private without the pressure of keeping up appearances. She was a real hothead but who could blame her, she got dealt a bad hand. I taught her how to manage that fire inside the way I did when I was young — perseverance, focus, discipline._

_The day I got the call that she crashed that boy’s bike, I think I realized what it meant to be a mother, to love someone more than yourself. I was so scared. It was a fear I didn’t know existed, and it burned so deep inside me I thought I might die too if she didn’t make it. All I remember from the ER is the blood. Dark, almost black, everywhere. The EMT, the nurses, the techs — everyone was covered in it like it was running from a faucet, but it was just her life slipping away, spilling onto the floor. Someone dragged me outside when the EKG flatlined, but I can still hear that buzzing when I close my eyes._

_That whole year of her recovery was an eerie blur, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but my girl pulled through. She learned to write again, to run again, to care about life even after it kicked her ass. I was shocked that she wanted to go into medicine after all that. I was grateful for her health, so following in my footsteps was just icing on the proverbial cake._

_Not to brag, but Kuvira’s got it, that special something that separates the good from the_ great, _the excellent from the_ legendary. _I’ve seen amazing surgeons in my day, but none as talented as her. She’ll tell you this and that about me helping with her physical therapy and med school applications, but I won’t hear any of it. These accomplishments are hers alone, and I’m proud to have been around to see it. Maybe I taught her a thing or two, gave her some good advice here and there, but she’s a force like no other. Her talent is born of and forged by impressive, relentless_ discipline. 

* * *

**5:45AM // Baltimore, Maryland // The Four Seasons Hotel**

If Korra can manage to turn her ears off, and keep her eyes shut tight, maybe she can sleep through her alarm. The incessant ringing is muffled by the mattress because her phone is wedged between it and the headboard, but it’s still loud enough to wake her. A loopy effort to find the snooze button results in a loud thud, louder ringing, and a lost fight. “Fine,” she growls as she kicks off the covers. 

She grabs her phone off the floor and finally turns off the alarm. Her arms reach into the air, cracking open, extending her joints lazily as she yawns. Mid-stretch she remembers where she is and spins around looking for Kuvira. The other side of the bed looks like no one was ever there, the comforter is tucked neatly, and the pillows are perfectly fluffed.

As if someone might jump out at her, she cranes her neck around the corner to see into the short hall, and notices that the bathroom light is off. Kuvira’s gone.

“She really meant _early,_ didn’t she?” Korra muses to herself. She shrugs away her concern and idly gets her morning started. 

Her left hand cradles her phone, scrolling down an endless feed of Twitter hot takes, while her other brushes her teeth. Something particularly romantic and cheesy makes her wonder what Kuvira is up to at such an early hour. Korra leans out the bathroom and checks the door, half hoping that the older physician might walk in with breakfast for two and flirty eyes.

When the door stays closed, and no one comes in with food, Korra goes back to the Twitter post and blocks the account. “Fuck you, romance.”

Once she’s had enough of social media, she actually puts some effort into her hygiene and gets dressed. There’s an off-brand coffee maker in the room but it’s too important of a day to suffer through a shitty cup of coffee. Korra glances at the clock and it’s already a quarter to seven, breakfast is well underway, so she’s hopeful that she can get a decent brew in the cafe. 

Every floor of the hotel is noisy and bustling, even with the sun barely in the sky. Korra’s a little thrown off by the crowds without her usual stimulant, and begins to regret her adventure downstairs. As she maneuvers to the cafe counter, a mindless man shoves past her like she’s invisible. 

She opens her mouth to share a line of disrespectful curses but someone’s already grabbed his shoulder and his attention. “You just bumped into her,” the bystander explains.

He looks up from his phone and quickly shrinks in fear, stumbles a bit, and stares. “Oh, I d— didn’t realize. Sorry, miss.”

Korra’s shit-eating grin is too innate to smother, and she nods triumphantly instead of accepting his apology. Kuvira let’s go of the man’s shoulder so he can scurry away, then she offers Korra some advice. “Watch where you’re going,” she says, then leaves the cafe with her to-go coffee in hand.

“Well— he— would a ‘good morning’ kill you?” Korra stammers as the older woman disappears into the hotel lobby.

* * *

**10:10AM // Johns Hopkins University // 113th Annual AMA Conference**

The American Medical Association is no less than a pantheon run by an elite committee of renowned physicians, those that have risen beyond the scope of their respective fields. Among them lies an innumerable amount of expertise, and together they shape the landscape of modern medicine. 

Once a year, for one weekend in Baltimore, all eyes turn to the AMA conference. Practitioners descend upon the city with equal parts curiosity and egotism. In their pursuit of knowledge, there’s a buried intention to make their names known. No other opportunity like this exists in the world. 

The convention center is expansive, with colorful carpeted floors, a lofty ceiling of exposed beams, and an assortment of temporary stages. Bright buzzing lights and white coats make it difficult to take in the whole scene at once, like sunlight on crisp white snow. Hordes of doctors meander through the tables and poster presentations, looking for something impressive, or inspiring, or both. If a doctor can successfully present here, they’ll leave with a reputation that holds weight in every hospital, clinic, and private practice in the country. The AMA conference is where legends are born.

Stepping into the building for the first time turns Korra’s knees into nothing but shaky tendons, elastic and unstable. Her eyes dart about looking for something familiar to anchor her mind but it’s all foreign. As people speed by and brush past, she starts to feel the unsettled churn of her breakfast in her stomach. She’s always loved performing in front of others, and up until a month ago, had flourished under pressure, but this stage seems a little too big. _I’m way out of my league,_ she thinks as the room spins.

“Check-in for presenters is over here,” Kuvira says, leaning into Korra’s space. It catches her off guard, feeling Kuvira’s breath on her ear, and the warmth of it brings her back, centered and present. 

Korra follows behind as the crowds parts around Kuvira, her straight shouldered strut cutting through the masses like a sharpened blade. She moves as if no one else is around, like the world is hers. Even the most mundane things — like walking to a check-in table — look inconceivably poised when Kuvira does them.

They spend some time signing in, getting their name tags and welcome bags, then start their search for their designated presentation areas. Korra is just a PGY4 so she’ll be in a room off the main floor. It takes a frustrating amount of time to find the door to the tiny hall. There’s about fifty chairs inside and a flimsy metal podium up by the projector screen. It’s a real possibility that there’s no cords to plug into her laptop, and even with the door closed the noise from outside is audible. 

“This actually makes me feel a bit better,” Korra says to herself, forgetting Kuvira had come along. 

“First big conference?”

“Oh…” Korra turns around as Kuvira is sitting her bags underneath a back row folding chair. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but yeah. This is the biggest conference I’ve ever been to.”

“It’s a lot of pomp and circumstance, but there’s no reason to be nervous. Chairman Tarrlok chose you for a reason.” Kuvira drapes her coat over the chair and takes a seat. It’s unclear if she’s being facetious or not. 

Korra narrows her eyes curiously but fails to get a good sense of the other woman. She decides to start setting up before people arrive.

“I’m sure he did,” she responds as she unpacks her laptop. “So uhhhh, what are your plans before you present?”

“What does it look like?” Kuvira holds her arms out. She’s settled in her spot, the first member of the audience to arrive. Still, Korra seems surprised.

“You’re staying for my presentation?”

“How else would I report back to the Chief?” The unaffected look on Kuvira’s face makes Korra nauseous again. Then it cracks, ever so slightly, giving way to a smug grin. “I’m joking,” Kuvira admits.

Korra chokes out a pained laugh. “Good one,” she mumbles, relieved but slightly perturbed by the attending’s odd humor. 

After some trial and error with the projector, the presentation is ready to go. A dozen or so people start gathering a few minutes before the start time, casually coming up to meet Korra and ask about Rush. She expected as much and has rehearsed answers for the doctors looking for news and gossip. A glance at the clock spurs her to get started. “I think I’ll go ahead and begin. I want to start by thanking you all for taking the time to be here.”

All eyes are forward, there’s a hazy glow washing between silhouetted faces, and the low hum of the projector is a welcomed soundtrack. The morning’s apprehension fades away, a quiet sets in.

“This was a double-blind, randomized clinical trial for Dr. Tran’s patented gastric sleeve technology.” Korra walks her audience through the methodology, the details of calculating risk, and the need for preventative care. She tells the story of a patient who thought their life was over before they entered the study. What could have been a series of monotonous slides turns out to be a glimpse into the mind of a talented gastroenterologist, and the team of doctors helping him push the field forward. When the screen goes black and the lights come up, the thirty three people in attendance break out into vigorous applause. 

Way in the back, in the very last row, Kuvira rises to her feet, clapping loudest of all. Her smile has changed from smug to something softer, grabbed by intrigue and a bit of awe. The surgery with Varrick and the presentation speak to a resilience in Korra that Kuvira finds familiar. Once again, she must recognize talent where it so clearly exists.

She nods at the young doctor from the back row, quietly reverent. Someone steps between their line of sight, grabs for a handshake, and starts up a discussion with Korra. More doctors join in and a small crowd forms, obscuring her view as she tries to spot Kuvira again. By the time she’s done chatting, Kuvira’s disappeared into the convention center and the endless waves of conference-goers. They'll catch up later.

* * *

**12:32PM // Johns Hopkins University // 113th Annual AMA Conference**

The morning crowd has doubled in size since Korra finished her presentation. It’s getting hard to walk without saying ‘excuse me’ every few steps. Half of the people seem delightfully lost, peering over at tables and posters that catch their eyes without any thought to what they're seeing. The other half seem frazzled, rushing around looking for their co-presenters, or check-in, or the name tag they lost immediately after getting it.

Now that her session is over, Korra falls in with the former, except she’s keenly aware of every woman taller than her, sporting a neat dark ponytail, or talking with a silky deep voice. She’s not _looking_ for Kuvira, but she wouldn’t mind running into her before the day gets long.

A large booth is set up a few tables away from the exit, the sign on top reads ‘Surgery’s Future.’ Dozens of guests are gathered in front of it, so Korra can’t tell what’s happening, even as she stretches onto her tippy toes. “What the heck is that?”

“It’s some hack from Case Western claiming to have a fire proof cauterizer.” Kuvira folds her arms disapprovingly as more people flock to the table.

Korra jumps back, once again caught off guard by Kuvira’s presence and haughty reply. “Where did you just come from? You weren’t here a second ago.”

Kuvira chuckles. It’s satisfying to have such an affect on her travel mate. “I would be remiss if I didn’t actually enjoy the conference. I went to see about the new line of ergonomic scalpels. Impressive really.” She keeps her head forward as she talks, tracking bodies as they shift around, moving like grains of sand through a sieve. 

A tension builds in Kuvira’s jaw as she stares off, and Korra follows the rigid angle as it rises into her hairline and disappears behind a few loose strands. They look so soft, and Korra’s fingers twitch as she imagines brushing through the tendrils. 

“Are you interested in getting lunch? I haven’t eaten,” Kuvira propositions, interrupting the peaceful daydream.

“I _could_ eat."

* * *

**12:46PM // Baltimore, Maryland // Little Dan’s Diner**

Across the street from the convention center is an old diner. Red swirly neon letters advertise that they’re open despite the dark setting inside. The light fixtures must be decades old because they cast a weak yellow hue over the booths. ‘Seat Yourself’ is scribbled on a chalkboard at the front door, so the two doctors scope out a spot that looks relatively clean.

As they settle into the booth, Korra becomes acutely aware that this is her first time sitting face-to-face with Kuvira. There was that dreaded run-in after The Surgery, but it wasn’t exactly a friendly situation. Now, without the poignant emotions and coursing adrenaline, Kuvira seems a lot less intimidating, and there are many more words that come to mind to describe her. Korra tries to silence them for her own sake. Lunch is lunch, and nothing more.

Kuvira reads over the menu with a stern knitted brow as if she gives as much consideration to her choice of burger as she does her clinical approach. When she sits the laminated sheet down, Korra is still undecided.

“What are you thinking of ordering?”

“I’m really bad at making decisions. The burger looks good but a salad would be the healthy choice. There’s wraps, but that seems like a gateway to burgers. I should just go full burger, right?” Korra looks up and finds Kuvira visibly enjoying her musings. She blushes a bit thinking how she must sound talking so passionately about diner food. “Since you’ve got it all figured out, what are you getting?”

“Well this is embarrassing, but I’m probably getting chicken tenders.” A gentle expression warms Kuvira's features until she looks almost bashful. 

“No judgement,” Korra says with an understanding smile. “Chicken tenders are the cornerstone of an on-the-go diet.”

“On-the-go? Is that what you call a surgeon’s diet? I call it involuntary fasting.”

And that’s all it takes, a bit of mutual humor and they're suddenly undone by laughter, off on a tangent about microwave meals, protein shakes, and the knock-off Pop Tarts in the attendings lounge vending machine.

“You would think a hospital with a half billion dollar endowment could spring for some _real live_ Pop Tarts!” The genuine astonishment in Kuvira’s voice makes Korra snort as she laughs. It’s a quirky, nasally sound, but Kuvira doesn’t tease. She finds herself enjoying the music of the chortling, it’s so different from the responses she usually inspires during conversations with coworkers.

“Here you ladies go,” the waitress sings as she slides their plates onto the table. “If you need anything else, just let me know.” 

Eating keeps them quiet for a while, only occasionally breaking to revisit their more witty jokes from the past half hour. The time ticks on without much concern from either woman and they finish up around 1:30PM. “It’s almost my time to speak,” Kuvira mentions as she checks the nearby clock on the wall. 

“The main stage is probably packed already. Practically everyone here wants to hear you speak.” Korra’s dangerously close to fawning, but she doesn’t particularly care.

“I don’t know about that, but I’m expecting a large turnout. It’s inevitable when you’re on the main stage. Even the people who don’t care at all will stop and listen just so they can say they were there.” Kuvira wipes her hands and tosses her napkin on her plate, then leans back on her side of the booth. “I honestly hate how this has become such a big deal, it’s barely about the medicine anymore. People are just keeping up with it like a game, like it’s a college football record, or a hot streak at the black jack table.”

There’s a subtle shift in the mood, and the austere Kuvira reappears. “What would you rather it be about?” Korra asks.

Kuvira blinks. What does she want it to be about? It’s something she hadn’t given much thought to until now. She leans forward on her elbows and folds her hands under her chin. “The patients. The people we save. Not the stats or the dollars. Medicine should be about healing _people,_ and nothing else.”

A whisper of guilt makes Korra break eye contact. For the past month, ever since she worked with Kuvira, she’s been more concerned about appearances and reputation, thinking that was what her superior cared about. She feels as foolish as ever listening to Kuvira be candid. She couldn’t have been more wrong about the younger Beifong.

After a beat of silence, Kuvira tries to change the subject while they wait for the bill. “So, Dr. Korra, what drove you to pursue medicine? What story did you tell in your med school applications?”

Korra scoffs at herself, remembering how dumb she felt struggling to write her essay for U Chicago’s direct admit program. Tenzin was the one who saw the potential in her, she didn’t have anything to do with it other than agreeing. “Honestly, it was all Tenzin. He and uhhh...his wife...they gave me a lot of support when I was in high school. He saw how good I was at math and science and put the idea in my head.”

Kuvira isn’t the least bit surprised, vindicated even. Sure, Korra had proven her wrong in more ways than one, but there was a reason she questioned her to begin with. Tenzin was still guilty of being too hands-on with his mentee. “Dr. Tenzin seems to be molding you into a fine young doctor, but I hope you make your own strides as well.”

It isn’t an outright insult, but Korra still winces from the sting. If Tenzin was with them, he would lean over and tell her to ignore the slight, but he was 700 miles away, and Korra doesn’t have an inner voice to advise her against hostility. “He’s not the saint everyone takes him to be. He and I haven’t seen eye-to-eye in a long time. I do _plenty_ on my own.”

“Really? He paints quite a different picture,” Kuvira goads. 

“Yeah well that doesn’t surprise me. A guy like him, with all that pressure being Aang’s kid, he’s expected to be the second coming of Jesus, and…” Korra pauses, suspecting that her face is red with anger. “Keeping up appearances as the model mentor, and doctor, and husband starts to weigh on you I guess. You make some fucked up decisions along the way, and I decided a long time ago that I needed to do things my way. I love Tenzin, but we have our shit…” her words trail, and she gnaws the inside of her jaw out of frustration. There’s so much more to say but this isn’t the time or place to say it. 

“I didn’t mean to imply anything negative.” Kuvira instantly regrets overstepping, it isn’t as satisfying after seeing Korra in the clear light of day. Really, _truly_ seeing her has changed so much.

“It’s fine. I’m probably being sensitive about it out of guilt.”

“Guilt for what?” 

Korra’s eyes get wide as she realizes what she’s said. 

“Here’s the bill, you ladies can pay at the front. Have a nice day now,” the waitress interrupts. Instead of following through with their conversation, Korra and Kuvira do some quick math and divvy up the bill. By the time they pay and leave a tip, the topic has faded to the back of their minds, and Kuvira only has about 15 minutes before she presents.

* * *

**1:03PM // Johns Hopkins University // 113th Annual AMA Conference**

“Please give a warm AMA welcome to Dr. Kuvira Beifong from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.” 

The crowd applauds with growing anticipation as Kuvira climbs the few steps onto the main stage. She stops to shake hands with the announcer, then takes her place in the center of the raised platform. The screen behind her is not elaborately designed, there are no graphics or fun animations, there’s not even a title. 

The background is plain white, the font is arial, the text is black, and the four columns of names are listed in alphabetical order, left justified, and single spaced. Kuvira didn’t put together a slideshow. This screen is all she prepared. 

“Good afternoon and thank you for coming to hear me speak. The program says that I will be discussing mortality and morbidity for surgical patients, but I believe that most of you are here because I’ve evaded the former and largely escaped the latter in my short career. So, this cannot be a talk about mortality or morbidity. I am obligated to speak instead about life and recovery.”

A magnetic hush falls over the entire convention center, or so it seems. The ambient din from those perusing the tables and exhibits has all but ceased, like someone turned down the volume on a radio. For thirty minutes and twenty six seconds, everyone is caught in Kuvira’s spell. When she paces from one end of the stage to the other, their eyes follow, their focus narrows. When she points to one of the dozens of names and recounts their case without so much as a notecard to reference, they lean forward in their seats, they gawk in amazement. And when she folds her arms and gazes out into the audience at the captivated faces, they look back at her with veneration that borders on worship.

“These names are not a means to my success. Patients are not tools in the pursuit of medical greatness. We cannot truly understand how to reduce mortality and morbidity until we commit to the idea that we are obligated to see each and every one of our patients as a complete person. My streak means nothing to me, it’s a statistic, a number. But, this list of names, means everything, it’s a hundred more birthdays, and a thousand more hugs, and million more memories. 

“So I will leave you all with this: go back to your practice and start making a list. Turn the tallies and the digits into letters and names. Then you can start working on change.” Kuvira stands for a moment, still and finite, poised as always. 

Then the audience erupts into cheers, loud and boisterous, moved to a standing ovation. A smile cracks at the corner of her mouth and she bows her head in humble gratitude. “Thank you, thank you. Please, enjoy the rest of the conference.” She exits the stage and is immediately swallowed by the horde of doctors waiting to share their praises. 

Korra doesn’t bother trying to vie for Kuvira’s attention, she’ll have plenty of time to pick her brain back at the hotel. For now, she just looks on as the limelight brightens Kuvira’s form. It’s mesmerizingly impressive to see her command the attention of hundreds without letting any of it go to her head, proving that her convictions are true, it's the work that matters to her, not the accolades. A heady, fluttering feeling stirs behind Korra’s smitten grin. Trying not to fall for Kuvira is becoming an increasingly futile effort. 

* * *

**5:13PM // Baltimore, Maryland // Uber**

Korra: I didn’t vomit at the podium. I call that a success

_Tits 👅: Proud of you! How were the other presentations?_

Korra: You mean Kuvira’s?

_Tits 👅: Oh...you call her Kuvira now?_

Korra: 🙂 in my dreams

_Tits 👅: Wet dreams?_

Korra: Please. Focus.

Korra: We're talking about the conference

_Tits 👅: I take it her talk was good?_

Korra: Honestly, it was fucking phenomenal. Ted Talk type shit! No one woman should have all that power

_Tits 👅: Kanye lyrics at a time like this?_

Korra: You really have the attention span of a goldfish

_Tits 👅: And you text like a Complex writer, so what’s your point, Tots?_

Korra: Whatever! 

Korra: I’m not going to survive two more nights in that fucking bed with this woman

_Tits 👅: You kind of have to. Just keep it in your pants for 48hrs_

Korra: Easy for you to say, you didn’t see her out there today. You’re not sleeping next to her at night. She smells like that Bath & Body Works stress relief shit when she goes to sleep. Even that seems erotic

_Tits 👅: LMAO! Tots, get a hold of yourself._

_Tits 👅: You know what...or don’t. I can only support so much longing before I start rooting for the one night stand_

Korra: THAT’S NOT HELPFUL AT ALL

_Tits 👅: Sorry...kind of 🤠_

* * *

**5:26PM // Baltimore, Maryland // The Four Seasons Hotel**

The hotel has that distinct smell that lingers after a monthly carpet cleaning. It pairs well with the soothing plush under Korra’s sore feet as she pads to the room with her shoes in hand. She keys in with her card and tosses the heels to the floor, letting out a long exhausted sigh. 

There’s a light on, and Kuvira is likely around the corner, so Korra lingers just inside the door. She pulls out her phone and scrolls through her texts with Asami. _Useless,_ she decides. She’ll have to put together the mental fortitude to quell her desires all on her own. 

“How’s it going?” Korra asks, trying her best to sound nonchalant as she looks for her night clothes. 

Kuvira has her laptop and a pile of papers spread out in front of her on the bed. She only stayed at the conference about an hour after her presentation, then she came back to the hotel to look into some literature for her clinical trial. Korra’s arrival is her first break in hours.

“It's...going,” she says passively, soreness making itself known in her neck and back. “What time is it?”

Korra checks her watch, “half past five.” 

“Wow, where did the day go?” Kuvira closes her computer and gathers the research papers into a loose stack. Her pressed white shirt is halfway unbuttoned and loosely wrinkled at her waist, untucked and messy. Without her shoes on, her bright purple socks look odd with the otherwise conservative outfit. 

She gets her things put away and stands by the bed, stagnant and a little dazed from the marathon of work. The room leaves much to be desired, including more space, because Kuvira feels intimately close to a bent over Korra. The younger doctor finds what she needs from her bag and stands too, bringing them face-to-face again without a table in between. 

It seems indecent to drink in Korra’s presence — her wide stance, undone belt, windblown hair, and the shallow flex of her abs as she shifts her weight. Kuvira considers that she may be staring, but can’t find a reason to look away. Maybe the screen time has unhooked the part of her brain responsible for professionalism, or maybe she’s simply run out of it after a day of networking.

Her gaze isn’t awkward but it’s heavy, and Korra blushes when it becomes too intense. “I’m going to shower, unless ummm—”

“Please do, I’ll wait until the morning,” Kuvira insists, her eyes still wandering over Korra's form. 

The bathroom door can’t close fast enough after Korra shuffles away. She presses her back against the painted wood and slinks to the floor, her heart pounding violently against her ribs. Once. Twice. A third time, she lets her head fall back with a thud, and eventually the pain clears her mind. _Don’t don’t don’t,_ she chants silently. Prayer is her last hope.

Kuvira changes into her pajamas — a loose fitting cami and plaid pants — and pulls her book from the nightstand drawer. She’s less than a hundred pages from the end when Korra crawls into the bed and quietly scrolls through her phone. It’s barely seven when sleep calls her name, dragging Korra into a dreamy fog. She loses her grasp on the phone and rolls dangerously close to the imaginary border in the middle of the bed. Breathy snores drift through the air as Kuvira reads about Achilles’ voice, “a terrible thing, cracked and broken,” as he mourns the death of his true love. 

She loses her place on the page when Korra stretches, unconscious and moving closer again. A languid arm falls over her waist, their legs tangle together effortlessly, and all the while Korra is lost in her REM cycle. Kuvira turns to stone trying not to wake her bedmate, preferring to let her sleep. The thinnest sheen of sweat dampens Korra’s forehead and traps her hairs against the smooth brown skin. Against her better judgement, Kuvira reaches over and brushes it away just as Achilles would for Patroclus. 

The tender sweep of Kuvira’s fingers is enough to rouse Korra, and she wakes with a start. “Huh…” she looks around, slowly adjusting to the lamplight again. “Oh fuck,” she groans as she registers her limbs thrown over the other woman’s body. 

“It’s fine,” Kuvira chuckles. She closes her book and sinks into the covers. Korra scrambles back to her side of the bed. 

“Shit, I’m sorry. It was a long day and I’m tired as hell. I’ll just— sorry.” She moves as close to the edge of the mattress as possible and trains her eyes to the wall. Kuvira lets her sulk, it’s kind of adorable.

Korra spends the next hour chastising herself, even when the light goes out and there’s only darkness left. Her mind explodes into a maze of embarrassment, and regret, and unavoidable desire. No matter how fast she runs, or how many corners she turns, she can’t get to an escape. All she finds is dead ends, the chilly air of her hotel room, and the keen sensation of wanting what she can’t have. It’s not until she hears Kuvira fall asleep that she finally closes her eyes and fades back into her slumber, lulled by the smell of eucalyptus and spearmint permeating from the other side of the bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> five chapters of not fucking each other is QUITE ENOUGH!!!!! see yall next Saturday 😘


	6. avidity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Korra and Kuvira enjoy the final day of the conference

_My father’s an architect. He designed parts of the Olympic Village in 1984, the pinnacle of his career. I was just a kid at the time, but I remember him lifting me up onto his shoulders to see over the construction gates. All the cranes and bulldozers looked like metal dinosaurs. I was mesmerized by the idea of a drawing coming to life. I wanted to be just like him._

_After getting my degree at Stanford, I moved to Chicago with my aunt Lin and my...and Kuvira. The city is a hotbed for design, home of the urban bungalow, and former imaginative playground to the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright. I had a lot of reasons to move here._

_Architecture fulfills me in ways that I never expected. Lines, angles, structure — I can manipulate these things but they are made of constants, malleable but unchanging. Where I find weakness, I simply build support. Where there’s instability, I swap materials. Math and science allow me to construct impervious walls, beautiful visions of security and strength._

_The craft is not unlike human emotion. When we feel threatened, vulnerable, or faulty, we erect walls too. We lock away our true selves with brick and mortar, beams of steel, heavy latched doors. There’s a peace that comes with knowing what you’ve built is impenetrable to judgemental eyes, prodding minds, and ill intent. A locked door makes for sounder sleep._

_In that sense, I’ve been an architect my whole life, constructing vaults to keep people out. The only person that ever made it past my defenses was Kuvira. I’m sure that’s why we thought we were in love. We found ways inside of each other and made homes there, safe from my mother, the LA bourgeoisie, the endless parade of elitist vanity. I missed her so when Su sent her away, and even more when I lost her to the grips of reality; she realized we were ill-fated long before I did._

_When the sorrow wore off, and against my mother’s insistence on taking a job with my dad’s firm, I took an entry-level position at a small Chicago company. I worked my way up to a partner on my own. The day I got my promotion, Kuvira finished her residency. Even though we were making separate lives, we remained tethered in some odd way. There’s comfort in knowing she’s nearby, and doing things that make her happy._

_If I could go back and do it all again, I would hold her hand, and tell her that I was just a convenient shelter, not the castle she deserved. I would push her to be open to new places, and experiences, and people. I would be a better friend._

_I’ve been married for five years, Asami’s the love of my life, and I learned that every great architectural design has multiple entrances. Asami found all of mine, peered inside, walked the halls, and loved me anyway. I learned to leave a few doors unlocked. Hopefully, Kuvira can do the same and experience the warmth of visitors again. Maybe that’s not possible after all these years of shuttered windows, but I want that for her more than anything in this world. She_ still _deserves a heart made into a castle, and someone just as regal as she is to love everything they find within._

* * *

**6:32AM // Baltimore, Maryland // The Four Seasons Hotel**

It’s hot under the hotel comforter. Downy, and plush, and thick. Korra tosses around until she wakes herself. Her clothes are clinging to her skin, her hair is mussed, and she feels groggy. As she comes to, she realizes that Kuvira is up, watching as she blinks awake. She freezes, nervous that she’s too close, wondering if she threw herself to that side of the bed in the middle of night.

Kuvira is silent, her gaze intense but soft. She reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind Korra’s ear, again. Slowly, determinedly, she lays her hand against the curve of Korra’s neck and leans forward. Their lips meet in a beautiful amalgamation of tenderness and lust. Pressing, parting, taking. 

Their breaths have real weight, falling into each other's mouths, crowding their throats, sweet asphyxiation. Korra reaches out to pull Kuvira closer and— 

“Good morning,” Kuvira drones in the darkness, followed by the heavy sound of the door closing. Korra jumps up, her heart thumping violently, and looks around to make sense of her thoughts. When a light flicks on, Kuvira is standing at the foot of the bed with coffee and a bag of donuts. “I figured we should eat before we head out.”

Hunger was the _last_ thing on Korra’s mind.

* * *

**9:44AM // Johns Hopkins University // 113th Annual AMA Conference**

The second day of the conference feels different. There’s a lighthearted air to the day, laughter ringing from the exhibits, and smiles all around. Kuvira eases into the crowd with her loose, powder blue silk blouse and wide legged steel gray slacks. Eyes turn to watch her float through the aisles, gawking murmurs following her like a trail of admiration.

After casually looking over a few tables with Korra in tow, they drift apart, enjoying things more suited to their own interests. Kuvira has a long talk with an endoscope vendor that wants to explore microscopic scopes. Korra wanders over to a booth offering resources for fellowship applications. They take time to make the most of their final day at Johns Hopkins.

Even as they indulge separately, Kuvira catches glimpses of Korra every so often — the swing of her neat bob as she watches flashy demonstrations, the slant of her smile as she makes small talk with other residents, and the motion of her hands as she recounts her presentation for those that missed it. Kuvira wonders, ten, twenty, sometimes thirty feet away, what Korra’s thinking behind those bright blue eyes. 

“Dr. Beifong,” a short plump man calls out. He hustles over to the small stage that Kuvira’s standing next to and grabs her hand before she can fold them safely behind her back. “I’m Dr. Mercer, from U Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. It is an honor to meet you.”

She smiles down at him politely and waits for him to make his interests known. “I attended your presentation yesterday. It was...just outstanding!” 

She winces at the high pitch of voice, which doesn’t match the rest of him. “Thank you, Dr. Mercer. I appreciate the kind words.”

He smiles at her giddily, a bit awestruck, before remembering to continue with the conversation. “I uh— hrrghhh” he roughly clears his throat. “I was hoping, as Perelman’s Dean of Students, that I could convince you to come speak with our M1s and M2s. The personalization of medicine that you spoke about, we believe it that at Perelman, it’s the foundation of our curriculum.”

“Is that so?” she asks, disinterested and quickly zoning out. 

His voice becomes a whirring noise in the background once she spots her younger colleague again. Korra is just a few tables away, but she doesn’t catch Kuvira watching her, making note of things she hadn’t noticed before, seeing with uninhibited eyes. 

Kuvira remembers for a moment how Korra flung their bags into the Uber with ease, and spoke with conviction despite a small crowd, and hovered cloddishly before taking her shower the night before. Korra’s tank top and sweats only revealed a bit more of her physique, but it was obvious that a sea of divine flesh was lying just beneath her clothes. There was something charming about her brashness, her ability to be precocious and tentatively confident, and Kuvira decides, with a strong sense of finality, that all of Korra’s raw talents could use some _...honing._

“How’s all that sound?” Dr. Mercer asks, beaming up at the taller woman. Kuvira hasn’t heard much of his pitch.

“Here’s my card,” she says dryly, pulling one from her pants pocket. “Send me the details.”

As soon as the one inch cardstock is gone from her hands, she walks away without any salutation. Dr. Mercer scrunches his face into frown but he hasn’t the gall to ask for her attention again. 

She finds a quiet corner of the convention center and texts Lin for Tenzin’s number.

Kuvira: Good afternoon, Tenzin. It’s Dr. Beifong (not Lin), are you busy?

_Unknown: Well hello. I hope the conference is going well, and I am quite free at the moment._

Kuvira: Great, but I won’t take much of your time. I just wanted to let you know that I’m open to hearing your reasoning behind having Dr. Korra work on our clinical trial.

_Unknown: That’s amazing! I hope she’s making us all proud, those conferences can be overwhelming for young doctors._

_Unknown: She has an innate talent for patient rapport._

_Unknown: Her work ethic is second to none_

_Unknown: ...typing_

Kuvira: I meant once I got back to Rush, Tenzin. Not now.

_Unknown: Right. Of course, my apologies. Enjoy._

* * *

**7:02PM // Baltimore, Maryland // Uber**

The app glitched during their request, so a large black Cadillac pulls up outside of a local Italian restaurant. Neither woman complains about the added luxury; inside, there’s smooth leather seats, tranquil music, and the pleasant smell of freshly cleaned floor mats. Lambent strips of lights line the door panels and under the seats, giving the back row an inviting glow, like a private section at a club.

“Fancy,” Korra jests as she looks around. 

“Indeed,” Kuvira adds, enjoying the silly smile Korra flashes her. Dinner went by fast, likely because they both awkwardly avoided the cocktail menu, unsure if the other wanted to change the mood of the meal. Sharing breadsticks and chatting over penne was a tame experience, almost devoid of the sexual tension they’d been quelling for days.

Korra checks her watch and notes the early hour. “If my 21 year old self knew I was heading home sober at 7pm in a new city, she would beat my ass.”

The imagery makes Kuvira chuckle. “We can keep you safe from 21 year old Korra. Do you drink wine?”

“I _drink,”_ Korra replies playfully. She knows that there’s an art to wine tasting but it’s never been interesting to her. If her glass is full with a strong bitter red, she’s happy. 

“Perfect.” Kuvira leans between the front seats and tells the driver that she’s adding a stop for the grocery store on the way to the hotel. “My first year as a vascular fellow at Rush, Zhu Li and I took a trip to Paris. On a whim, we hopped on a bus to Bordeaux and spent the day touring vineyards. I bought a sommelier handbook for my coffee table, and read the whole thing in our tiny AirBnB off the banks of the Garrone river.”

She’s looking out the front window as she talks, and Korra can’t help but to lean closer as the tale unfolds, suddenly very interested in wine. Kuvira laughs at herself, “I signed up for wine pairing classes when we got back to the states. I made it to a handful of them before my caseload got too big. I was...ambitious back then.” 

Her smile is brightened by the reverie, a peek of her bright white teeth showing as her lips part. Korra is stuck, unable to pull her eyes away, even as Kuvira turns to look at her. “Do you prefer red or white?”

“Strong,” Korra answers frankly, earning a mischievous grin from the attending. 

“Good to know.”

* * *

**7:12PM // Baltimore, Maryland // Eddie’s grocery store**

Korra’s never been so excited to be at a grocery store, she practically falls out of the truck. She rights her feet and holds out her hand to help Kuvira step down. The attending plays along with a roll of her eyes, trying to hide how amused she is by the cheesy gesture.

The small store has an entire aisle dedicated to wine, and Kuvira’s hopeful that she can find something suitable for the night. Reds are shelved with reds, and whites with whites, and a few champagnes are crowded at the end. It bothers her that the lighter wines with high acidities are sitting out instead of being chilled. She picks up a cabernet franc and frowns.

“This should be stored at 55 degrees, otherwise it just tastes like alcohol.” One hand rests on her hip while she complains, a vision of intellectual grump.

 _“Tastes like alcohol_ sounds good to me,” Korra mumbles as she walks towards Kuvira, her fingers grazing the bottles as she goes, clinking like a xylophone. 

Kuvira looks up and shakes her head. “It hides all the notes of strawberry, and chilis, and—”

“Chilis? In wine?” 

“Never mind,” Kuvira sighs. “Let me get something with a simple profile.” 

The next five minutes are dedicated to thoughtful consideration. The attending picks up and sits down no less than 10 different bottles. Finally, she decides on beaujolais, surprised that the store has such a good year in stock — a 2014 from Chénas. Korra peers over her shoulder to check the alcohol content, and she’s happy to read 14% on the label.

“I’ll get something to open that bad boy.” She grabs a cheap corkscrew, and they make their way to checkout. Luckily, the hotel room came equipped with a few glasses and an ice bucket.

* * *

**7:55PM // Baltimore, Maryland // The Four Seasons Hotel**

The gulping sound of wine pouring from the bottle underlines the laughter in the room. Korra tries not to shake too much as she giggles, holding her glass out, clasping her mouth shut. Kuvira shakes her head amusedly as she pours. “We never found the clip after all that exploration. That woman was under anesthesia for an extra hour. It was awful.”

“At least you got her gallbladder out before you dropped the clip,” Korra says between gasping laughs. 

“It’s not _that_ funny,” Kuvira pans, trying desperately to look serious. For a moment her straight face is believable, but they quickly erupt back into howls.

“Wait, wait, I need to know…” Korra starts before taking another generous swallow of wine. “Who’s the worst resident you’ve ever had?”

“Oh god,” Kuvira huffs. “There’s been too many horror stories to count. Let me think.” A warmth rises from her chest as the alcohol sets in. She decides to take off her top to finish their conversation in a thin cami. The strap of her bra is black, and lacy, and falling down her shoulder.

“There was one girl— woman I should say. I was newly promoted to attending and Lin insisted that I start letting residents on my cases right away, and I _hated it.”_

Another sip of her drink and her lips are staining a purplish red. “My very first time letting a PGY2 scrubbed in was a disaster. She fucked up the iodine prep, dropped my scalpel, _left in the middle to pee!”_

“Not the cardinal sin?”

“Oh yeah, she was not ready for the big leagues. I refused to sign off on her hours and almost had a falling out with Lin when she reported me. What a bitch,” Kuvira concludes in a tipsy murmur. The profanity grabs Korra’s attention away from the loose, lacy bra strap.

“She swears...interesting,” the younger woman goads. 

“Mmmm, on occasion,” Kuvira admits. Her voice has dropped a full octave, and the husky pitch sends Korra’s head spinning as if the wine hadn’t already warped her ability to think straight. “Enough about me. What’s your med school/residency horror story?” 

Korra coughs nervously, eyes wide, caught off guard. Her dramatic anecdote was awfully messy, embarrassing, and relatively sad. She isn’t sure if it’s the type of thing you share over wine in a hotel bed, so she rubs the back of her neck as it gets hot, and titters uneasily.

“Full disclosure?”

“I thought that’s what we were doing here,” Kuvira encourages with a raised brow and her glass to her lips.

“Right...well...I was in a bad place before Step 1, like really, really bad.” She wraps both hands around her glass and empties what’s left into her mouth. “I uh...Pema told me that she found a random hotel charge on their bank statement. I mean, what else do grown people do in hotels?”

Kuvira bites her lip to keep from being a smart ass — they were two adults in a hotel, after all — then Korra continues. “It all feels like a blur, but one thing led to another and we...I can’t believe I’m saying this.”

“I’m not really sure I understand what you’re saying,” Kuvira says honestly.

But, it’s hard for Korra to believe, even as Kuvira’s expression remains cool and attentive. Does she really have to spell it out? “TenzincheatedonPema, thenPemacheatedonTenzinwithme!” she yells, blurting it out all in one breath.

Wine spurts from Kuvira’s lips as she chokes on the unexpected confession. She was not expecting that type of full disclosure. “Oh hell!”

“You can’t say anything to anyone. I honestly shouldn’t even have brought it up. I must be drunk,” Korra insists in a panic. Somehow, she thought this through without _really_ thinking it through. Tenzin was a respected member of the hospital, and a dirty rumor with a lot of truth to it could ruin his reputation. “Please don’t?!”

“Calm down, kid. I’m not going to tell anyone.” The attending places her empty glass on the side table and thumbs the errant drops of wine from her lips. “Dr. Tenzin’s secret is safe with me.”

A shaky sigh rattles from Korra's lungs. Their night has reached a new level of familiarity, and she’s thankful that Kuvira seems generally unfazed by the mention of her relationship with a much older woman. As she focuses on lowering her heart rate, she notices that the sheets have been sprayed with wine from Kuvira’s alarmed snort.

“Oh shit! Are we going to get charged for this?”

Kuvira looks down too and bursts into laughter. Of course they had to share a bed all weekend, and of course they decided to drink in said bed, and of course they’re going to lose the deposit and have to explain to Tarrlok what happened. Of course.

“Well, uh, maybe…” she drunkenly giggles, scrambling to her knees and pulling at the foot of the covers. “Maybe we can just flip these over.”

Now, Korra’s laughing too, because how the hell is that going to fix things? Still, she follows suit, sitting her wine glass on the floor and fumbling onto all fours to help pull. 

Housekeeping has everything so tightly tucked that they struggle in their effort, laughing louder and harder as they lose their battle against the comforter. “Here, let me widen my grip,” Korra says, and she reaches in front of Kuvira. She doesn’t mean to, but her maneuvering brings their smiling, flushed faces within inches of each other. So close that wine on their breath tickles their noses. “Sorry,” she whispers, shamelessly staring at Kuvira’s damp, scarlet lip.

“You’re fine.” A simple, silky phrase offered in response. 

It feels like they’re back in the surgery hallway, with the darkness and the cold tiles, standing too close to feel anything other than a racy electric current running through their bodies. Since then, they’ve just been orbiting each other like distant moons, barely avoiding imminent collision, mutual misgivings being the only thing keeping them apart. 

“Can I kiss you?” Kuvira asks, breathy and curious. 

Korra only nods before she’s trapped, sinking slowly into a licentious kiss. There’s no desire to part ways once they’ve finally, _finally_ made it this far, and their hands aid in deepening their efforts as tongues collide, and teeth nip, and the room becomes a hollow void.

A pleased hiss vibrates against Korra’s mouth as she bites down just enough to make Kuvira heel. The older woman’s eyes shoot open; she wasn’t expecting _that,_ but she likes it. It’s tantalizing to feel a bit out of control. 

Sturdy, skillful, brown fingers weave their way through Kuvira’s hair, and pull her up onto her knees so they’re facing each other, front to front, dizzy and unhinged. She feels her cami being tugged over her head but barely registers the unclasping of her lacy black bra. The frigid hotel air makes her aware of the bareness of her breast, and Korra’s wanton touch makes her glad to be bare. Firm hands cup her breasts, and play teasingly with her nipples — feathery and precise — until a wet maw sucks her up, stealing her ability to focus. “Oh fuck.”

“What?” Korra hums around her supple flesh, determined in her laving, coy in tone.

“Shut up! Keep doing that.”

“Gladly,” she moans, taking a nipple between her teeth, and briskly flicking the tip of her tongue.

“Yes. Like that,” Kuvira instructs, rubbing at the back of Korra’s neck, pleading for more with the arch of her spine. In the next moment, her pants come undo and she’s pushed onto her back. So much for _honing the young doctor’s skills._

Korra sheds her own shirt and bra and pants, then pulls off Kuvira’s slacks. “These socks,” she teases when the orange calf-length clothing is all that remains. 

“Are you always this annoying?” Kuvira growls, grabbing the back of Korra’s arms and making her fall to bed, their bodies finally pressed together without any interference. All the ways they had imagined this eventuality pale in comparison to their perfect complement of skin, melding into one endless expanse of radiant flesh. “You’re so fucking pestilent.”

“There’s that swearing again,” Korra quips, her tongue darting out to lick across Kuvira’s pouty lip. “Very crude.”

Kuvira’s breath hitches and she regains a bit of conviction. She sneaks her hand between their resting bodies and curves it against Korra’s mound. The delectable friction against her clit makes Korra’s legs quiver. 

“Fuck, Kuvira.”

The informal name makes her smile. “Not Dr. Beifong?”

Korra bites her lip to stave off a goofy laugh. She lowers herself and speaks directly into Kuvira’s ear. “I can call you that if you want me too.” She licks along the edge of the attending’s earlobe, relishing the way she writhes in response. 

“Call me whatever _the fuck_ you want.” Kuvira stretches her arm and finds Korra’s entrance, already dripping and gaping with need. The tip of her finger slips inside, shallow and placid, and Korra grinds her hips down for more. 

The length of her finger disappears between lithe, drooling walls as Korra rides, panting steadily, peering down into dark green eyes. “What?” Kuvira asks.

“Mmmmm, fuck. Okay, I deserve that,” Korra admits about the mocking, rolling her hips harder. A tightness builds in her core and she gets close sooner than she expects. “Sh— com’ere,” she husks, and in one clumsy motion, they switch positions so Kuvira’s on top. She drops her elbows on either side of Korra’s head to brace her weight, and their hips fall against each other with a tacky smack. 

Kuvira is guided into a gentle rocking of her own, and her clit glides against Korra’s, slick with juices spilling from her sex. “Yes,” she cries, her eyes fluttering shut. 

There’s barely any friction, their lips and sensitive nubs lost in a pool of wetness. It’s beautifully vague torture, and they whine for each other, hold onto each other, suffer for each other. “Just like that,” Korra mewls, clawing into the small of Kuvira’s back, bucking upward with wild disregard.

“I— I’m coming,” is the last thing Kuvira can manage to say before she tosses her head back and screams. Her body contorts beyond her control as she grinds, lifting her up, bending her backwards, her hands finding stability on top of Korra’s taut abs. “F— fuck, Korra,” she exhales as the orgasm rips through her, sending every muscle into a tremulous seizure.

Korra sits up on her elbows and lets her face suffocate between two heaving breasts, kissing the skin between them. Kuvira wraps her arms around her and looks down, breathlessly laughing at the sight. “Greedy, huh?”

“Very,” Korra grumbles with her face buried. 

An agile shift in Kuvira’s position lets her sit between Korra’s spread legs and wrap herself around her colleague. And while Korra indulges her love of heavy, round beauty, Kuvira returns her fingers to where they wanted to be most.

She parts soaked lips and strokes against the engorged folds, playing as much as she works. Korra abandons her frivolous pursuit with a sharp, lusty inhale. “Shit,” her head is tilted backwards by Kuvira’s grip in her messy bob, and her neck is assaulted, systematically bruised with a trail of suckling bites. 

“You feel…” Kuvira pauses to look into Korra’s eyes. _“Amazing.”_

The sound of her voice alone makes Korra throb, her pussy nothing more than Kuvira’s plaything. She inches forward, hoping her superior will go inside, and spread her open, and take no mercy. Hopefully, if she’s lucky. 

Kuvira can sense the desperation in her squirming and obliges the silent request. First two, then three adroit digits enter Korra, widening her entrance, stroking against her walls. “Fuck that’s tight,” Kuvira moans into her mouth.

In — with an expert restraint.

Out — with a taunting pace.

And in again, and out again, until Korra is swelling like the ocean at dusk. Kuvira fucks into her with lissome fingers, drawing out every swipe and plunge, cementing her role as the one in charge. Korra sways to and fro, loose-limbed, barely conscious. “K— Kuvira...that’s...so... _good,”_ she drawls, the air getting thick, her mouth drying up, every bit of moisture pooling between her legs.

Her whole body becomes fluid, rising and building, a wave casting shadows onto the beach. All she knows is being full, unfurled slowly, succumbing to this moment. The intensity mounts and her arms encircle Kuvira’s body. Their mouths meet in a desperate kiss. She cries out for release.

“Come for me,” Kuvira begs, increasing her pace to a numbing vibration, and Korra obeys. She reaches her peak and crashes into shore, washing over Kuvira with her leaking heat. “Mmmmhmm, just like that.”

Korra thinks she might have time to breathe or come back down, but she’s quickly turned onto her stomach, and her hips pulled into the air. A ravenous tongue slurps her clean, working from her clit to the puckering hole between her ass cheeks. “Oh fuck, oh god,” she says, her voice a tremoring, unstable song. 

Every time Kuvira licks, she devolves into increasingly incoherent pleas. Nothing about her is solid. Korra is but a begging, whimpering mess. “O— okay! I— Kuvira, please.”

The rapture doesn’t cease until she forces the older woman away and collapses to the bed. The lights seem too bright, the air too thick, and the bed too spinny. Why is the bed spinning?

“Sorry,” Kuvira whispers, making her way to Korra’s side. She tosses a leg over her thigh, and aimlessly caresses the skin of her chest, all red and sweaty from exertion. Korra is a vision when she’s operating, but this is so much better.

“Sorry for what,” she asks, trying to snap back to reality.

“It wasn’t too much?” a genuine question in the moment.

Korra turns her head and kisses between Kuvira’s eyebrows. “Not even close.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twas the sex scene worth a five chapter hold out?? I want to know your thots, folks!

**Author's Note:**

> My (ambitious) goal is to update this fic weekly, on Saturdays, for the next seven weeks. Pray for me and my time management. I am chaos personified.
> 
> You can send me reminders in the comments or on twitter @korrasb


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